Table Of ContentCognitive Prosthetics
Health Industrialization Set
coordinated by
Bruno Salgues
Cognitive Prosthetics
Maxime Derian
To my father: Raymond (†)
To my sister: Cécile (†)
To my mother: Denise
To my sister and her husband: Florence and Laurent
To my brother: Xavier
To my brother and his wife: Charles and Gisèle
To my wife: Mona-Lisa
To my daughter: Victoire
I love you
First published 2018 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Press Ltd and Elsevier Ltd
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Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience
broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment
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ISBN 978-1-78548-295-3
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Preface
This book constitutes a sociological, anthropological and philosophical
consideration of the cultural consequences of the current advent of “ubiquitous”
information technology.
Indeed, information technology is following a trend of ever-increasing
pervasiveness1 in our environment and in our lives.
Digital devices are literally proliferating. For most of us, today they are essential
elements in our day-to-day lives.
Different types of automated objects are produced, transported, sold, used and
thrown away, in never-endingly increasing quantities. We view manufactured
objects, despite their very high level of technology and their relatively recent nature,
as almost completely commonplace. We encounter them in our surroundings in
various guises, in our pockets and sometimes even inside our body. This situation
presents unusual and fundamental anthropological questions.
In this research, we hypothesize that some of these digital devices, those which
accompany our body on a day-to-day basis, tend to become, globally and for a
growing number of individuals, true prostheses for their body or orthoses for their
mind.
Here, we are going to attempt to define the outlines of the “anthropology of
digital prostheses” of the human body.
1 This is the technical trend known as “pervasive information technology” or “ubiquitous
information technology”.
x Cognitive Prosthetics
Whether they are implants or detachable2, digital tools appear to be able to
modify, subtly or drastically, their wearer’s physiology or thoughts. The presence of
these machines gives rise to new social behaviors. This is the process that we are
going to explore in this volume.
Indeed, this book is dedicated to digital orthoses of the human body and it
proposes a consideration of the development of cognitive digital tools in our daily
lives. By “orthoses” we refer to the fact that digital tools are above all else objects
that influence our behavior, our cognitive activity and our postural attitudes.
To a certain extent, these are also a form of mobile prostheses, such as
“exosomatic organs”, added to our body thanks to technoscience and industry.
Currently, it cannot be denied that smartphones, tablets and computers are in the
process of turning our social and professional environments, and our daily lives,
upside down, because they provide constant access to the web and social networks.
Are these digital tools that envelop us to an incessantly greater extent in a
position to overturn our social order to such a point that they would make the very
form of society, as we know it now, literally disappear, in favor of an entirely new
human interdependence? This is a theme that I approach by means of my concept of a
“Hive” as a social order, and of “the Hived” as a new manner of describing certain
human populations.
Maxime DERIAN
July 2018
2 A “removable tool” is defined here as a material object that we are at liberty to equip ourselves
with or to get rid of.
Introduction
We consider that a “detachable digital prosthesis/orthosis” is a digital tool in
contact with the human body capable of interacting with its environment (by
generating movements and electrical impulses, and producing images and sounds)
and whose control and use interface is accessible to the user.
A prosthesis, by definition, is something that replaces a deficient organ.
Referring to a leg prosthesis to designate the artificial leg worn by an amputee or
agenesic person (born with the absence of a member or of a part of the human body)
seems entirely appropriate.
Thus, bionic prostheses of limbs (hand, arm, leg, foot, etc.) are a particular type
of digital prosthesis. However, this category of prosthesis is still very rarely seen,
only in exceptional cases. The demand for it is limited, since currently, and very
fortunately, proportionately few people are affected by amputation or agenesis in
comparison to the overall population.
The therapeutic and reconstructive vocation of these particular types of
detachable digital tools leads them to be fully regulated as medical devices. Their
uses are therefore contained within a strict framework.
However, is it an abuse of language to use the term prosthesis when we are
talking about a communication tool such as the smartphone? In my view, it depends
on the connection that has developed between the user and their tool.
First, we need to admit that the body is incapable of connecting to the Internet, or
to a telephone network in order to transmit data, by itself. The human body is
equipped with five senses and the capacity to formulate words and to make gestures;
however, it is not in a position to naturally detect wireless networks. It is therefore
essential for it to resort to a digital device in order to exchange data with the
xii Cognitive Prosthetics
Internet. Thus, this tool does not replace a deficient organ, but rather an organ that
was until now non-existent.
However, the need to access the Internet and various online services has a
tendency to become a social imperative (whether it is a case of ease or professional
efficiency when scheduling a meeting, or to pay one’s taxes to comply with a legal
injunction).
If this access is so highly valued by a significant part of society, then the
detachable communication tool becomes essential. It can then, to a certain extent, be
assimilated to a form of prosthesis imposed by contemporary life.
Second, detachable digital prostheses can also be “cognitive
prostheses/orthoses”. Computers, smartphones, game consoles, augmented reality
glasses and tablet computers are appliances external to the human body, intended to
interact with it essentially through sight, hearing and touch, and which overall have
no therapeutic function.
This category of prostheses, that we can designate “cognitive prostheses”, is on
the other hand extremely widespread. Thanks to these tools, we create, access and
diffuse texts, videos, animations and sound recordings with unusual ease. Even
before mobile use of digital tools, it proved to be the case that their calculation
power and ease of use generated phenomenal quantities of exchanges of
information, increased professional and artistic productivity, and significant
economic consequences.
When a prosthesis is difficult to move, due to its weight, its energy supply or a
particular wiring (dialysis apparatus, artificial lungs, office computer), its use
requires the user to be relatively sedentary.
However, with the significant progress in terms of autonomy and
miniaturization, a large number of digital removable prostheses can now be easily
transported and repeatedly accompany the human body.
It is relatively legitimate to talk about these devices as “orthoses” when we want
to bring the prescriptive and influential aspect induced by prolonged use to the
forefront. Implanted therapeutic prostheses aim to be discreet and silent. Cognitive
prostheses, on the contrary, are highly stimulating, providing us with information in
real time, and ceaselessly propose new data to consult and to evaluate. Web 2.0
encourages us to make immediate contributions using functions such as “like”, by
making comments, etc.
Introduction xiii
These notifications, in a certain way, affect our daily rhythms, implant ideas in
our minds that would otherwise not be there and are often also driving forces for
marketing, politics, cultural industries and the like. These are the means of
conveying (sometimes incessantly and in an untimely manner) “industrial”
stimulations created by the “world” of consumption of material and immaterial
goods, just like the most “traditional” stimulations coming from our inner circle,
from our family, our friends or our work colleagues.
Initially, the orthosis is an object that assists and supports a deficient organ.
Traditionally, an orthosis is a cane, or crutches, or a plaster that holds the body in
place or reinforces weakened parts of it.
Orthopedics in the classic sense designates the desire to straighten out part of the
body, and the orthosis is the tool used to do this. This can be for posture or for dental
implants in the jaw (with orthodontics). Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish,
evokes the concept of “social orthopedia” to talk about the capacity of human
institutions to influence the behavior of members of society by resorting to
compulsory prescriptions and punishment mechanisms, in particular by influencing
life rhythm and movements. Foucault uses the idea of prison to support his thoughts.
Without going that far, it is possible all the same to consider that our digital
assistants play a significant role in influencing our daily rhythm, our time
management and our relations with others. With exactly this in mind, instead of
talking about prostheses of the body to describe smartphones or their equivalent, it is
however entirely appropriate to name them “orthosis”, since they support our
behavior on a day-to-day basis. They ring to connect us with those who wish to
speak to us, they flash to indicate that a message has been received, their content
helps us to find our way around cities, they can allow us to buy goods,
recommended beforehand by a clever advertising algorithm akin to alchemy, etc.
This is far from anecdotal. Portable cognitive tools have just recently been
democratized and had already polluted our contemporary environment. They are
currently used daily by a large proportion of human populations on Earth.
As is the case the world over, smartphones were sold by the millions in France in
the year 20171. The number of smartphones around the world could reach the
considerable number of 3.3 billion by the end of 2018. Various connected objects
are proposed on the market and they have various degrees of success. Smartphones
are an unprecedented commercial success. Digital watches like the Apple Watch
have benefitted from a passing fad, which quite quickly faded out. Google Glass has
1 Available at: http://www.economiematin.fr/news-smartphones-utilisation-monde-reseau-
operateurs-mobiles.
xiv Cognitive Prosthetics
not yet been adopted en masse, perhaps due to the aesthetic restrictions of wearing
such devices on the face and evidence of many problems related to personal privacy.
However, if we consider the accumulation of all types of connected devices, then
we realize that they are already present in our lives en masse.
According to the estimates of Erich Spitz, advisor for the group Thalès, there
were more than 1,000 billion digital objects on the planet in 2010, including the
different types of RFID2 tags, workshop machine-tools, various digital tools and
computers3.
More than 6 billion mobile telephones were already in operation around the
globe in 20124. We consider, therefore, that 80–90% of the human population has a
mobile telephone5. This colossal spread of digital objects is a wave that, in the same
way as a stream or high seas, currently seems irrepressible and almost
uncontrollable.
In an urban context, we are surrounded by machines and robots. Even in the
countryside, we are constantly immersed in flows of electromagnetic waves
generated by the use of radio transmitters, for television and radio broadcasting, for
mobile phones, for smartphones, for Wi-Fi networks, satellites, radar systems and a
large number of other communication devices.
With repetitive use, a kind of behavioral, psychological and social dependency
sets in, which leads little by little to the prosthesis being seen as an essential object,
a new form of extension of the human body. It becomes natural to live amongst
machines.
2 Certain digital systems are very discreet, like RFID chips. They are used as anti-theft
devices in shops or as swipe cards for access to certain areas. Although they are equipped
with a microprocessor, they are not human protheses since they do not have a user control
interface, but are instead a function added to a material object. The associated social
representation is assimilated to a tag or to a key, and not to a computer. However, when the
RFID chip is implanted in a human body, it becomes a prosthesis allowing a digital network
to identify the body in question.
3 Intervention at the Collège de France 2006, on Friday 13 October 2006.
4 “Mobile Phone Access Reaches Three Quarters of Planet’s Population”, World Bank Press
Release, Washington, available at the link: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/2012/07/17/
mobile-phone-access-reaches-three-quarters-planets-population, 17 July 2012, consulted on
18 November 2012. The term “mobile phone” is used here to both describe all smartphones
and all classic mobile telephones.
5 Certainly not all these telematic terminals include functions that we find on the latest
smartphones, but nevertheless all these devices are external digital devices, which have a
screen, a keyboard, a microphone, a loudspeaker and a digital microprocessor.
