In what ways does—or does not—the more mundane example of a human using a web-enabled smartphone exhibit some degree of bio-machine hybridization, and thus the creation of a web-extended mind?
Humans have always been “natural-born cyborgs.” Technologies for cognitive extension are the result of a fairly long, if philosophically under-considered, technological exploration of “man–computer symbiosis” and human augmentation.
Otto, who, due to being damaged with some kind of neurological short-term memory loss, can only navigate his way to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) with the aid of a notebook. It is claimed that the notebook be given some of the cognitive credit, despite being outside the boundaries of the brain and skin. Despite its seemingly strange implications, the Extended Mind Hypothesis is a straightforward extension of standard philosophical accounts of functionalism, such that any function that fulfills a cognitive role should count as genuinely cognitive regardless of what substratum a particular function is implemented on, be it biological or technological.
The selection of certain technical artifacts has led to cognitive extension becoming increasingly widespread over the last half a century—it is no historical accident that we increasingly feel at one with our techniques.
The mind is no longer “in the head” of intelligent individuals, but is ultimately better conceived as a co-evolving, and historically contingent, collective intelligence.