My New Cyborg Vision
A tale of how quickly our minds begin to rely on new technologies
That picture above? It’s a little mirror I’ve been wearing — mounted on my glasses — while I ride my bike.
It’s called the “Take A Look” mirror, and in the last month I have become thoroughly addicted to it.
It’s not only made my cycling far safer …
… but it’s given me a fresh glimpse into how profoundly we humans incorporate new technologies into our bodies. We are, as the philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark puts it, “natural born cyborgs”.
And now I’m a cyborg with a mirror.
To make a long story short, the reason I got this thing is because I spent this summer riding my bike across the US, as part of research into my next book on micromobility. (You can read some of my posts about it here, and see the daily Strava reports from my entire ride here.)
I spent a lot of time cycling on narrow roads that didn’t have much room for bikes. They could be pretty dangerous! If you were lucky, you’d have a nice wide shoulder of six or seven feet; but quite often it would dwindle to…
