In fact my computer came back from Apple a few days ago, but I am still in a state of wonder that it feels like a missing part of my brain has been restored. More and more I am convinced that I am a network and that network doesn’t stop at the edge of my skin.
There was a great piece in 3Quarks by Abbas Raza about Jeff Hawkins’s theory of the brain – mainly the neo-cortex – as a memory/prediction system. I was so excited that I immediately ordered Hawkin’s book, “On Intelligence” and wasn’t disappointed. Hawkins made the very intelligent choice of enlisting a co-writer, Sandra Blakeslee, science correspondent for the New York Times, so the book is written in straightforward English, so that one can focus on understanding the concepts rather than wrestling with unfamiliar language.
I had come across Hawkins ideas about intelligence some years ago and at the time had dismissed him as a rich techie wandering into areas he wasn’t equipped to deal with. Well I was wrong. No doubt, people working within the areas will find niggles to dismiss him, but as non-expert, but someone who spends quite a lot of time reflecting on how my mind and the minds of others work, I found him pretty convincing.
Curiously, following reading “On Intelligence”, I read Malcolm Gladwell‘s “Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” (perhaps better subtitled The Power of Thinking Without Consciously Thinking) , which has attracted a certain amount of rather dismissive reviews and reading it in the context of Hawkin’s theory, found myself nodding, yes,yes,yes.
Hoping to complete a triumvirate, I bought Teed Rockwell‘s book “Neither Brain nor Ghost”. This followed reading a review in John Thackara’s blog, where he talked about Rockwell’s idea that mind is “a single unified system embracing the nervous system, body, and environment”or as Rockwell puts in his comment to the entry,” I am arguing in my book is that the self is a behavioral field that expands and contracts within an environment.”
Sadly, Rockwell’s book was not the clarification I had been hoping for, but more a book written by an academic for other academics. Which is a great pity, because although my talk of losing half my brain when my computer goes wrong is in part a joke, my growing sense that who we are doesn’t stop at the edge of our skin isn’t simply something for academic debate, but a perception that has important practical implications.