Outsource Your Brain for Nirvana

October 26, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

The Outsourced Brain
By DAVID BROOKS

The gurus seek bliss amidst mountaintop solitude and serenity in the
meditative trance, but I, grasshopper, have achieved the oneness with the
universe that is known as pure externalization.

I have melded my mind with the heavens, communed with the universal
consciousness, and experienced the inner calm that externalization brings,
and it all started because I bought a car with a G.P.S.

Like many men, I quickly established a romantic attachment to my G.P.S. I
found comfort in her tranquil and slightly Anglophilic voice. I felt warm
and safe following her thin blue line. More than once I experienced her
mercy, for each of my transgressions would be greeted by nothing worse than
a gentle, "Make a U-turn if possible."

After a few weeks, it occurred to me that I could no longer get anywhere
without her. Any trip slightly out of the ordinary had me typing the address
into her system and then blissfully following her satellite-fed commands. I
found that I was quickly shedding all vestiges of geographic knowledge.

It was unnerving at first, but then a relief. Since the dawn of humanity,
people have had to worry about how to get from here to there. Precious
brainpower has been used storing directions, and memorizing turns. I myself
have been trapped at dinner parties at which conversation was devoted
exclusively to the topic of commuter routes.

My G.P.S. goddess liberated me from this drudgery. She enabled me to
externalize geographic information from my own brain to a satellite brain,
and you know how it felt? It felt like nirvana.

Through that experience I discovered the Sacred Order of the External Mind.
I realized I could outsource those mental tasks I didn't want to perform.
Life is a math problem, and I had a calculator.

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was
that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the
information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with
external cognitive servants - silicon memory systems, collaborative online
filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can
burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it
tells me what I like.

I click on its recommendations, sample 30 seconds of each song, and download
the ones that appeal. I look on my iPod playlist and realize I've never
heard of most of the artists I listen to. I was once one of those people
with developed opinions about the Ramones, but now I've shed all that
knowledge and blindly submit to a mishmash of anonymous groups like the
Reindeer Section - a disturbing number of which seem to have had their music
featured on the soundtrack of "The O.C."

Memory? I've externalized it. I am one of those baby boomers who are making
this the "It's on the Tip of My Tongue Decade." But now I no longer need to
have a memory, for I have Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia. Now if I need to know
some fact about the world, I tap a few keys and reap the blessings of the
external mind.

Personal information? I've externalized it. I'm no longer clear on where I
end and my BlackBerry begins. When I want to look up my passwords or contact
my friends I just hit a name on my directory. I read in a piece by Clive
Thompson in Wired that a third of the people under 30 can't remember their
own phone number. Their smartphones are smart, so they don't need to be.
Today's young people are forgoing memory before they even have a chance to
lose it.

Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing
my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic
than ever. It's merely my autonomy that I'm losing.

I have relinquished control over my decisions to the universal mind. I have
fused with the knowledge of the cybersphere, and entered the bliss of a
higher metaphysic. As John Steinbeck nearly wrote, a fella ain't got a mind
of his own, just a little piece of the big mind - one mind that belongs to
everybody. Then it don't matter, Ma. I'll be everywhere, around in the dark.
Wherever there is a network, I'll be there. Wherever there's a TiVo machine
making a sitcom recommendation based on past preferences, I'll be there.
Wherever there's a Times reader selecting articles based on the most
e-mailed list, I'll be there. I'll be in the way Amazon links purchasing
Dostoyevsky to purchasing garden furniture. And when memes are spreading,
and humiliation videos are shared on Facebook - I'll be there, too.

I am one with the external mind. Om.


.