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Hi, everyone!

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I want to talk to you
about a new way of looking at the mind.

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What I call the extended mind is the idea

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that the technology we use
becomes part of our minds,

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extending our minds and indeed 
ourselves into the world.

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We'll start with something
that might be a little bit more familiar:

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the extended body.

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We are used to the idea
that we can extend our bodies

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with technology.

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We know about prosthetic limbs.

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Here is the athlete Oscar Pistorius

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running on his prosthetic legs.

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You don't need prosthetic limbs 
to extend your body.

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Blind people say that their canes
serve as an extension of their body.

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You know, it feels exactly
like a body from the inside,

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or in more mundane everyday experience,

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a car can feel like
an extension of your body,

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a bike, or indeed, a musical instrument.

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You saw a great illustration
of that a few minutes ago

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with Tjupurru with his didjeribone,
a real extension of his body.

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Well, so it is with the body,
so it is for the extended mind,

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where technology gets incorporated 
into our human minds.

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You might think that to incorporate 
technology into your mind

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you'd have to turn yourself into a cyborg.

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Something like that!

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A whole bunch of, you know,
of pipes and tubes inside your head,

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or at least you need a whole bunch
of fancy technology

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like this on your head,


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but I actually think there's
a more ordinary kind of mind extension,

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which is happening to us
right now, all the time,

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as we move into the technological future.

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So take our friend the iPhone.

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I've had one of these now
for maybe three or four years,

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and it's basically started taking over

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a whole bunch
of the functions of my brain.

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(Laughter)

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Things my brain used to do
are now done by my iPhone.

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I mean, there's a million examples,

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take memory:

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How many people use their brains
to remember phone numbers anymore?

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Not me!

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You know, my iPhone does all the work.

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It used to be, the biological memory
used to carry the load,

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now the iPhone is carrying 
the load for me,

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acting as my memory.

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The iPhone serves to control

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planning functions
that my brain used to do.

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Spatial navigation,

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offloaded from my brain into Google Maps.

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The iPhone even stores
as the repository of my desires.

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I've got a program on the iPhone

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that tells me my favorite dishes
at the local restaurant.

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I go there and just look it up
and say this, this, this.

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The iPhone is controlling 
my desires for me.

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It even makes decisions for me.

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Here's the executive decision maker.

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Am I going to go speak
at that TED conference?

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Oh, definitely!

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You might say, "Okay, well,
this is all a big metaphor,

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and it's a little bit
like a mind in someways."

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But I think there's actually

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an interesting philosophical thesis here
that I want to defend,

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that in some sense the iPhone
is literally becoming part of your mind.

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Your mind is extending
from your brain into the world,

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so the iPhone is actually part of it.

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The iPhone hasn't been
implanted into your mind,

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but you might think it's as if it were in.

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Here's an iPhone implanted into your mind,

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it's as if it was implanted
into your mind,

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although it's actually
out there in the world.

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That's the extended mind thesis.

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So the iPhone's memory
is basically my memory.

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The iPhone’s planning or navigation

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is basically my planning and navigation
as if it had happened inside the brain.

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Now for me as a philosopher,
this is really interesting

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because one of the central
philosophical problems about the mind,

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maybe the central philosophical
problem about the mind,

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is what we call the mind-brain problem.

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How does the mind - your thinking
and your feeling - relate to your brain,

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this bunch of mushy neurons
you have inside your head?

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Is it something more
or is it something less?

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If you ask most people,
"Where is your mind?"

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they'd point and say,
"Well, it's somewhere in there."

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This extended mind thesis,

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I think it's some transformed
vision of the mind,

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but the mind is not just in the brain,

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it's partly in the world around us,

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in the environment that we interact with.

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Now, I don't know.

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You might think this is kind of crazy
or even totally mad.

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When my collaborator, Andy Clark, and I

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first put this thesis forward 
back in the mid 1990s,

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we came across a bit of resistance then;

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a lot of people made objections.

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Back then, we didn't have iPhones.

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Our central example was a notebook.

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People writing stuff down in the notebook

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and using that as a memory.

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And indeed, you don't need high-tech

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to get the idea
of the extended mind going.

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The very first time
somebody counted on their fingers,

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that was a kind of mind extension.

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A kind of addition that could have
been taking place in your head

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is happening on your fingers,
but technology really amplifies

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this extension of our mind.

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And I think it's made the thesis 
ring true for more people as well,

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because we experience
this actually happening to us.

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But still you might object
in various ways.

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This iPhone is just a tool,
it's not really part your mind.

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For it really to become part of your mind,
you'd have to implant it like this.

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To be in your mind it's got to be
on the inside of your skull.

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Or maybe, it can't be part of your mind:

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it's metal.

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Minds are biological.

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They involve a soul or something.

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Now, I think it's a tricky issue,

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but I think this kind
of reaction which you get

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involves a kind of a brain chauvinism.

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It's like a gender chauvinism,
or race chauvinism, or species chauvinism.

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What's so special about the brain?

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What's so special
about the inside of the brain,

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compared to the outside?

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For a start, it's like,

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if you've got stuff that's going on
on the inside of the brain,

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the same stuff could in principle go on
on the outside of the brain.

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We want to say [there's]
no difference in principle

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as long as it's driving
the processes inside the brain,

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the action, the consciousness,

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in the same way 
that would happen otherwise.

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There's no principle barrier
about the skull;

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that would be skull chauvinism.

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Likewise, metal versus biology.

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If the metal does the same job
the biology is doing,

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that would also count 
as part of the mind.

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Otherwise it would be
biology, DNA chauvinism.

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So I think that objection can be rejected.

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You might think that -

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Somehow consciousness
is at the very center of the mind,

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and I've got some sympathy with this.

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Consciousness is
this deeply internal state.

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But I think what we're thinking,
what we're feeling

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right in the present moment 
is at the core of the mind,

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but there's always
a whole lot to our minds

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which is outside our consciousness.

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What we think, our innermost desires,
our hopes, our fears,

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our personality traits,

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most of this is not passing through 
your mind at any given moment.

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Any given moment is just
a tiny little snapshot.

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What makes you you
is a whole bunch of stuff

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which is outside your consciousness
available to affect us.

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So your memories are mostly
outside your consciousness.

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The view here is it doesn't matter

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whether it's stored somewhere deep
in your brain or out there in the world.

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If it's out there, accessible to you,
driving your state,

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then it counts as part of your mind.

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There is still a brain
at the core of all this.

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I'm not saying
the iPhone is itself a mind.

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You are still the mind with your brain
and your consciousness at the core.

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But the iPhone is part of it.

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It's kind of an extension, if you like.

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What was that?

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That's right, my iPhone begs to differ.

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It thinks it's the mind
and I'm the extension.

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(Laughter)

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So this thesis I think is not just -
it's a new way of looking at the world,

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a new way of looking at the mind.

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But I think it actually makes a difference
to some of our practices.

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In Alzheimer's disease,

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when people describe themselves
as losing their minds.

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And one thing we found works really well

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in handling people with Alzheimer
and slowing the decline

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is the use of mind extension technology.

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People use notes
in the environment, for example,

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to act as a kind of memory,
external memory, with labels everywhere.

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This really serves to slow down
the loss of mental function,

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keeping some aspect of their minds
out there in the world.

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There are issues about -

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It makes a difference to education.

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There are debates
about open book examinations

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and the use of calculators in exams.

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Well, if you take
the extended mind thesis,

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you ought to be testing
the whole extended self.

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If a calculator or a computer
is going to be with you,

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coupled with you,
reliably available in the future,

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it is part of your extended self,

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and you ought to be testing
the whole extended self.

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Here's a case of extended perception.

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A blind person who starts
using his iPhone as a vision tool.

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This is the color identification program,

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Color ID.

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You can download it.

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It basically reads out colors.

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You point it at something
and it reads it out.

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He said he used this to see
a sunset for the first time.

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He held it up and it said,
"Red, orange, yellow, azure, crimson."

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He was moved to tears.

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It felt like he was seeing
the sunset for the first time

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using this as an extended
vision mechanism,

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extended perception mechanism.

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And as wearable computing becomes
more and more ubiquitous in our lives,

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this is just going, I think,
to become more and more common.

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Here we've got glasses that compute stuff
for us through extended perception.

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There's also the socially extended mind.

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We all know when other people
become extensions of your mind.

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We all know long-term couples

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where one person acts
as another person's memory.

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You know, reminding them
things at the right time,

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or when they finish
each other's sentences

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or speak as a single
individual in a conversation.

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In effect, what's happening now
is one person is becoming

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part of, an extension of
another person's mind or vice versa.

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I'll be in my mind if -

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I'll be in your mind if you'll be in mine.

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I think Bob Dylan said that.

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Also, social networking
is really amplifying this.

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So, when I was preparing
this talk about a month ago,

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I sent a note out to Facebook.

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"I've got to give a 15 minute TED Talk
in Sydney next month,

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on the extended mind.

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Any ideas on how to approach it?"

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And I got a whole lot of responses,

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some pretty useful responses
from this social network,

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which is kind of surrounding us,
becoming part of our extended mind.

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There were more, and there were more,
and there were more,

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(Laughter)

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including of a whole bunch of useful
suggestions, I stole a bunch of them.

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Not least of them, this one,

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"Exciting, maybe you could
work Facebook in?"

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(Laughter)

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Or, "Well you could start by mentioning
you crowdsourced the whole talk ..."

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Thanks guys, that was handy.

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Now there are some downsides and dangers
to this whole extended mind thesis.

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And one is that as our minds
move into the world,

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we become more vulnerable to their loss

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than when they are protected
on the inside of the skull.

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This is already something familiar
from things like the floods in Queensland

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or there are bushfires in Victoria.

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We often talk about the greatest tragedy
being that people lose their memories.

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Their houses and their
possessions and so on

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have basically become part of them.

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The loss of them really feels
like the loss of one's self.

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And as more of one's mind gets extended,
the more there is vulnerability.

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Just say somebody steals my iPhone.

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[IF YOU CAN READ THIS,
SOMEBODY STOLE MY iPHONE]

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(Laughter)

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You might think that's a form of theft
and they should be punished for this.

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But if I'm right, that should
actually be reconceived

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as a really vicious form of assault.

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Like getting into my brain
and messing with my neurons.

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And that really does kind of capture
the attitude I have to my iPhone.

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You might worry this is going
to turn us into robots.

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Remember the guy from Lost in Space?

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"Danger," Will Robinson!

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But I think we have to remember

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we still always have consciousness
at the middle of this, and judgement,

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and the extension of our minds doesn't
abrogate us from using our judgement.

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With better and better technology,
which becomes more and more flexible,

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there's the hope that the interplay
of judgement and technology

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might move us forward in interesting ways.

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So, I actually think then, to conclude,

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this extended mind thesis offers us 
some hope of an optimistic worldview.

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People say, "Is Google making us stupid?"

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This is a debate which has been
out there in the media.

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Well, if I'm right
about the extended mind thesis,

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there's a sense in which
Google is actually making us smarter.

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Google is getting inside our minds.

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And I don't know about you,
but I heard someone saying,

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"When I sit down and Google,
I feel like my IQ goes up 30 points."

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(Laughter)

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It's like all that knowledge -
and they say knowledge is power of a kind,

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so it leads to a kind of
potential democratization, too,

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of the powers of the mind.

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As technology becomes cheaper
and available to more, and more advanced,

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it's going to spread.

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Phones are already spreading.

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Google is spreading.

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With time, this becomes
available to everyone.

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In a way I think what's going on here

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is a trend which is
in the very early stages

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of turning us into
superheroes of the mind.

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Technology is gradually
giving us these superpowers,

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turning us into cognitive
super geniuses, if you like,

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and it is going to go more
and more this way in the future.

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The question is, will we use
these powers for good or for evil?

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That's the gift of the extended mind
and the challenge it presents

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as we move into our extended future.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)