How the Mind’s Felt Mastery of the Body Set the Agenda for Technology
Perfecting body and mind with more efficient devices, and the irony of the upper class’s replacement by computers
The history of technology and its social ramifications look like they stemmed from the misleading primordial impression that the mind controls the body as a master exploits its slave.
That’s what it feels like, naively, to be a person: an immaterial “spirit,” mind, or homunculus that’s made of consciousness sits behind the sense organs and operates its body like a vehicle. The body obeys the mind’s will with no backtalk (until health issues arise with aging). You think you need to stand up from a seated position, and your body complies.
Bodies, slaves, and tools
That impression, then, was likely the paradigm of technology, the inspiration for later inventions of tools, structures, machines, and the like. The body itself feels and acts like the mind’s unknowing material servant. The more self-conscious we became, as the cerebral cortex stood apart from other brain functions, the more…
