It’s a beautiful and sunny Sunday of early summer. My niece is getting married today. I took a shower, put my suit on, socks, shoes, a bit of perfume and I’m ready to leave.
Ops! I almost forgot the tie. OK, I got it now, a quick knot and done. Ops, I’ll try again. Umm, this doesn’t look right. I must be a bit rusty. Next try. Another try and another one and another one. What’s wrong with this fuc****** tie?
I used to wear a suit and a tie everyday to go to work and now it’s like I completely forgot how to tie it. Oh! I’m already late for the wedding.
OK, calm down. I watch a YouTube video and 2 minutes later the tie looks wonderful on me.
If you want to learn how to cook spaghetti carbonara, where do you go? Where would you go if you are looking for a nice restaurant to impress your date? Who would you ask for directions to get somewhere? What about finding out the best things to see in a city or reviews on a smartphone you want to buy?
That was 10 years ago. Collective Wisdom exploded and nowadays most of our knowledge lies outside of our brains. We take most of the decisions outside of our bio brains. We use the External Brain for most of our daily decisions.
At the beginning we thought we were in charge, the conscious mind. Then we found out about the subconscious mind where 99% of the decisions were made. A few years ago we created the External Brain where nowadays most of the decisions are made. Our lives move faster and faster everyday and there is nothing that we can do to stop that. Our “built in” mind proved itself insufficient to cope with the increasing complexity and speed of modern life. Without the External Brain we will feel overwhelmed and our minds will refuse to take anymore. We will be handicapped.
What I like the most is that you don’t even realize you are processing information and making decisions. Your internal brain is not involved so no scarce personal energy is wasted. My niece was telling me that three months ago she received at home a jar with some nutraceutical pills for her to take. The External Brain identified that some of her bio measurements were out of normal due to the stress produced by the wedding. The External Brain chose the best product she could take based on her personal characteristics and Real World Evidence collected automatically from millions of other users like her taking that product. The following day she received the product at home and today she is enjoying perfect health for the most important day of her life.
Nowadays we are so used to it. It’s a natural process. Kids learn how to walk, how to talk and how to use their External Brains. Our internal memory is used just as a cache for fast access and all the knowledge is stored outside. It is not just a memory storage warehouse but also a extremely powerful decision making engine.
Seen with the eyes of a person from the past it sounds like superpowers but with today’s eyes is a necessity, a commodity.
It may sound sad but on the bright side we are able to achieve and experience 100 times more things that we used to. That makes us “smarter” and paradoxically makes the world spin even faster.
Why is this exciting?
The External Brain is a tool that indeed gives us superpowers, and for the people who discovered how to use it in the right way it really helps them live wonderful fulfilling lives.