Human Operating Systems
The interface between your mind, your body, and the things in the world.
The New Mindscape #T1–2.
The idea of a “Human Operating System” (HOS) is an interesting metaphor to start thinking about how our minds are structured, and how our relationships with the world and society and with our body are structured. There is hardly anything on this term in the academic literature. There are a few articles on human-robot interaction, which have the notion of a mental operating system. If you google the term, you will find that the term is widely used in some spaces, primarily among futurists, who are thinking about how to create a sustainable human civilization. You will find a lot of very interesting discussions of this notion of a Human Operating System on the internet in various blogs and websites, and even some videos (see some links at the end of this essay).
Some people are trying to develop new Human Operating Systems through collective video gaming and so forth, in which you learn to cooperate, to build a new world rather than just always fight against each other. Also, some other concepts of human operating systems focus on sustainability and how to create good, healthy workplaces. There are some beginnings of theorization of what an operating system is, as far as a human being is concerned. All of these discussions have something in common with what I am trying to say. But at this stage, I’m using this concept in an experimental way. I have written elsewhere that Humanity needs a new operating system.
As an anthropologist, why did I decide to use this term instead of some of the other terms that are more widely used in anthropology and sociology?
I started thinking about “human operating systems” when I was thinking about different ontologies in anthropology.
Human Operating Systems and Ontologies
What is an “ontology” in an anthropological sense? An ontology is simply a set of ideas and practices about what the basic constituents of the world are, and the relationships between the different things that the world is made of. What is the world made of? And how are those things connected? That’s an ontology.
For example, in a naturalist ontology, the world is made of physical objects. Human beings are different because human beings have subjectivity, which objects don’t have. This is an ontology which states that the world is made of two kinds of things: the world of nature, which is physical and has no intrinsic meaning; and the world of the human mind, which gives subjective meaning to things.
Another ontology is, for example, the ontology of Chinese cosmology, in which the universe, and all beings, are made up of Qi, or vital energy. There are different flows of Qi between these different beings, depending on how these beings are constituted, how they are organized and how the relationship between the beings is dynamically being played out.
We can find hundreds of ontologies when in the different cultures, religions and philosophies of the world. One thing that fascinated me is that you can switch from one ontology to another. So, for example, I go to the gym and operate my body according to a naturalist ontology and train my muscles, whose size and force can be objectively measured and which are quite distinct from the subjective meanings I give them. But, in the morning, after getting up, I also practice exercises that are derived from Chinese qigong. At that time, when I move my body my mind fills my body, I feel energies in my body; there is no real distinction between the physical form of my body and my subjective experience of it. At that moment, I’m operating my body and mind according to the Chinese cosmology or ontology.
So, between the qigong practice and the gym, it’s possible to switch from one ontology to another ontology. This isn’t simply switching ideas, but switching ways of operating your body and the way your mind relates to it. You can literally embody different ontologies. You can move back and forth between them. It’s like switching operating systems on your computer. You might have an Apple computer, but it’s also possible to install a Windows operating system on it, and switch to it when you need it (I have written more about this here, in my essay on Poly-cosmology).
An operating system, then, is another way of talking about an ontology. Yet the concept of a human operating system goes farther than that, because an operating system is not just a set of ideas; it’s a system for how you actually operate. It’s something that is operational. It’s an interface. If we think of an operating system in a computer, we have the hardware and the operating system. The operating system is the interface between the computer, the mind of the user, and the rest of the world.
A human operating system links our body, our mind, and the rest of the world out there. Our operating system is the interface between these three things.
For a long time, anthropologists used the word “culture” to describe something similar, but it’s a rather vague concept that’s hard to operationalize. It’s term that refers to all our beliefs, representations, habits, practices, institutions, art, knowledge and so on — all those man-made things that shape the way we perceive the world and interact with it. Classical anthropological concepts of culture take it as an organic whole — so that the different aspects of “Chinese culture” are all interconnected with each other and reinforce each other, as are the different aspects of “Western culture.”
But “culture” is a rather vague concept, and elements of culture aren’t always neatly integrated, so some sociologists prefer talk about a “cultural tool kit”. That implies that culture is not an integrated whole, but there are many different ideas, habits and ways of doing things that we pick up in society, and that we use when we need to, like tools. So my “cultural tool kit” includes both knowing how to lift weights at the gym and how to practice Qigong; although these practices come from different cultures, I can use either “tool” whenever I want to. But this idea of the toolkit, and other conceptions of culture that are often referred to as “post-structuralist” or “postmodern” go to the other extreme of emphasizing fragmentation and the absence of systematicity.
I’m interested in how different elements create a system can be operated in a consistent fashion. That’s why I think an “operating system” is a more concrete concept, easier to grasp and understand than the notion of a culture. I don’t use it as a synonym of culture. It’s more specific than the notion of culture.
Another term that some scholars use is “mental patterns” or “mindset”. But mental patterns are something that’s in the mind. The focus is on how you think. An operating system, on the other hand, is more than a set of ideas that guides the operation of your mind. It’s also a way by which we operate the relationship between our mind and the physical world outside of us and our body.
Let’s think again with the computer operating system analogy, such as the Windows operating system or the Apple IOS operating system. The OS is not something that only operates the computer itself; as a person, I relate to the computer differently because the operating system makes me undergo different procedures. I have to do different things with the computer. The operating system is not just a set of ideas, but it also structures the relationship between my mind and the computer, and through the computer, it structures my relationship with it other things and people.
The concept of Human Operating System (HOS) brings us closer to some theories in Science and Technology Studies (STS) where an increasingly used concept is that of a socio-technical system. We tend to see any technical system as a machine. But any technical system is always deeply embedded in society, and thus in human minds: the technical system was designed by humans, and it affects human interactions with the system and the world. The HOS concept is closely related to this notion of a socio-technical system.
The concept of a socio-technical system is becoming more widespread, because we literally spend much of our life, if not most of it, interacting with technical systems, computers, automated algorithms and so forth. But these ideas can apply in other contexts, too. Prehistoric hunters had spears and axes. They had a relationship with their tools, and their relationship with those tools also influenced or guided their relationships with trees and animals. You will relate to a bear differently if you have a spear, a gun, or only your bare hands. The relationships between myself, my spear and the bear are a socio-technical system. My mind operates and needs to be trained in a certain way to be able to handle the spear. Thus, a human operating system is also an interface between the mind and the body.
Parallel operating systems
Another dimension to the idea of a HOS is that we have dominant and parallel operating systems. As for our dominant operating system, all of us go to school and we are trained in modern academic systems. We learn the different components of the dominant operating system. We need to know math — how to count and to compute. We need to have a quantitative mindset. We need to know how to write in a certain way. We need to know how to follow certain logical procedures of thinking. We need to know how to sit properly at a desk. We need to know how to sit in rows. We need to know how to communicate in a certain type of language. We learn all of these things. These things that we learn in the modern educational system are the dominant operating system. There are different programs in that operating system, whether you’re doing accounting, engineering, or medicine. These are just different applications of the same basic operating system. These programs have their unique components within the operating system, yet all of them require the same basic way of counting, of quantifying, of communicating, of relating to the material world or other people. This is a dominant operating system. And we, as modern people, are all programmed in this operating system, as well as some specific applications.
But we also have parallel operating systems. These are marginalised systems that we use in other parts of our life. Let’s use the example of Chinese medicine. Most people in Hong Kong use Western medicine, which is an application of the dominant operating system. But in some contexts, many of the same people use another operating system, such as that of Chinese medicine. Their bodies and minds go into another mode. Another example is when they’re in a religious community, engaging in a religious practice — their bodies and minds enter another mode, in which they operate differently. These are parallel operating systems. People are always switching in and out of them. We have a dominant operating system and parallel operating systems, and we can switch between them.
For more on what’s wrong with our current operating system, see my essay “The Fatal Flaws in our Operating System.”
Save this URL for the whole New Mindscape series, in the proper sequence.
Some internet resources on Human Operating Systems:
Some academic articles using “Human Operating System” as a concept:
On the “ontological turn” in anthropology:
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014127
This essay and the New Mindscape Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change, with the support of the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.Building a new operating system
