Evolution leaps past Darwin as we become one with machines

I woke up one day and discovered I was a cyborg — you know, meat and machine intertwined. We're all changing, but not necessarily paying attention to it or guiding the transformation.

I left my cellphone home recently. I spent the day absently patting my side where it would normally be clipped to my belt and feeling incomplete, as if I were groping for a missing limb. Just a couple of years ago I could carry it or not and be just as happy either way. But without conscious intent, my relationship to the device changed. The phone stopped being simply a tool and became part of me.

Biology and technology have been connecting since the first human made a stick an extension of her hand or augmented his foot with a shoe. But we are in the midst of a quantum leap in our marriage to technology.

My glasses are an extension of my body, but my phone is an extension of my mind.

Writing is an extension of the mind too, but in a more passive way than many new technologies. I can write something down so that I do not have to carry it in my brain, but I am the only actor in the process of storing and retrieving my thoughts.

My phone tells me when I have an approaching appointment. It helps me find the number I am looking for by anticipating my next keystrokes. It is an active partner.

Internet search engines are even more powerful co-thinkers, making thousands of decisions on our behalf each time we enter a query. They do scanning and sorting that used to be the province of gray matter alone.

We are evolving in a way Darwin did not anticipate.

Instead of tiny changes from generation to generation, we are experiencing big leaps when it comes to integrating technology into our lives.

Boomers may be comfortable with much of the new technology, but our children are integrated with it. In some sense they are different creatures.

My son and I were out of town for a week this month, but he never left his friends. They communed every morning and evening online. He never sent an e-mail either. That's for older people.

He never even called anyone on his cellphone. Text messaging is cooler.

Dexterous thumbs are transforming the language, simplifying spelling and grammar, distilling it into poetic terseness — or degrading it, depending on one's age, I suppose.

Whatever boomers may think, these cyborgs are the future.

Some folks are saying the increase in the number of people with attention-deficit disorder might really be adaptation to a different world. There is way too much information to deal with in the old ways.

Agile brains that flit from thought to thought, leaving details to computer programs, may be just the thing for the digital age. How do textbooks and old learning methods fit into a world that changes every day?

Kids are on their own learning to navigate this different reality. Schools and parents are mostly clueless, so young people chart their own paths and teach each other the way.

Can we trust their development to Google and MySpace, programmers and entrepreneurs who understand the cyber world, but whose goals may not include nurturing young people into productive lives?

Something is changing, and it isn't just about gadgets. Old-model humans might want to upgrade our connection to this transformation because those new models still need our input.

Jerry Large: 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.