Warren Neidich, an artist and theorist known for his work on cognitive capitalism and neuroaesthetics, speaks in this excerpt from Pinchbeck's Future of Consciousness online course. He cites research on London taxi drivers showing differences in the posterior hippocampus between those who navigate with GPS and those who do not, and argues that children raised on turn-by-turn navigation never build the parietal-hippocampal links that wayfinding requires. He calls this neural capitalism: capacities that were once a neural commons are externalized into devices that can later be metered and charged for, with ChatGPT extending the same logic to reasoning and research. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler and Gilbert Simondon, he describes exosomatic organogenesis, the co-evolution of brain and technology, and treats ayahuasca visionary art as the external side of an internal neural event.
Guest: Warren Neidich
In brief
- Neidich argues that heavy reliance on GPS during childhood critical periods prevents the normal wayfinding circuitry between the parietal lobe and hippocampus from developing.
- He describes neural capitalism as the process by which shared human cognitive capacities are externalized into technologies and then sold back to users behind paywalls.
- He treats artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT as the next stage of this outsourcing, shifting research and reasoning out of the brain.
- Drawing on Bernard Stiegler and Gilbert Simondon, he presents technology as exosomatic organogenesis, an externalized organ co-evolving with the brain rather than a separate tool.
- He argues that the history of technology has always been prosthetic, but that it is now reshaping the brain itself in ways people are not conscious of.
- He points to ayahuasca as an example where a neurochemical cascade at the synapse generates external cultural forms such as shamanic ritual objects and a whole genre of visionary painting.
Full text
there has been some evidence by the Migel uh neuro neuroscientific team that um those individuals who are using um um GPS there's two two parts of this story okay there's two parts of the story the first part is what you're referring to which is that there those people who use GPS totally without uh you know for all wayfinding activities they have found that their posterior hippocampus is smaller than those who do do not use it especially interesting were uh taxi cab drivers in London those they did research on those that used the uh GPS system and those did not and found that there was a mark difference uh in in their hippocampus between those two PE two groups of people what I was talking about I think with Daniel's other why talking about is that our children there's we all know kids that are that are you know know uh are using GPS now uh and they they' really never learned how to wayf find uh they they basically go to the supermarket down the street and they use their GPS they go to to visit their friends they use everyone's using um uh they are using their GPS's all the time and they never especially during critical periods uh they are not allowing the normal wayf finding circuits in the brain to form and finding is a very complicated thing so it's not just before between the posterior hippocampus and the parial low but to make it simple they you you could think that they haven't developed a very strong connection between the prial lobe which is all about uh spatial relations and and and and important uh you know kind of mapping uh of of our world a knowledge of the mapping of the world in the and the hippocampus which is about memory spatial memory and they never develop these VAR Central um links so what H what I'm arguing is that they're dependent on these uh these Technologies like GPS and that one day and and there's a whole group of them who have never developed these things and one day uh just like there firewalls and pay walls uh for newspapers like the guardian or the New York Times one day in the ne very near future uh a pay wall is going to show up on their on their screen saying you've used the G this GPS app 25 times and now you have to pay for it so there's an example of what an example of neural capitalism in which our you know fundamental abilities uh that we all you know are are are are neuro common are you know are are our our our human abilities to WF find having not developed have been replaced by a device that now is charging us for that thing that we could do before that was what I was talking about and another example is artificial intelligence like chat GPT because now even in in in in terms you know instead of researching or reasoning that's GNA be more and more just outsourced but I guess creativity yeah creativity I mean you know I mean the history of Technology it's always a prosthesis right it's always developing some aspect of of of you know our you know it's like we want to move faster so we have you know bicycles and cars we want to you know fly we develop you know so you know we want to see more distances so we develop satellites but now it's like you know now it's going deeper into the brain uh and um we're not really conscious of the way the brain is being remapped and and re reconstructed another thing that I found very interesting was around kind of your idea of the inter interior and the exterior brain but somehow the exterior brain is more like in in the social as a whole uh can can you explain that a little bit yeah I mean I was I'm you know these These are ideas that you know have been around for a long time and um I've just kind of mapped them into another you know uh language but basically um there is you know the work of Bernard steer and he would be the person I would most refer this to and also uh Simon Don who was very important um before for his for his ideas and that is basically there's is that there is a process called exosomatic organogenesis and that what happens is is that this exosomatic organogenesis is exosomatic It's external it's that the history of Technologies these Technologies are entangled with the history of Technologies the history of the changing and evolution of the brain so that they are part of the brain they are they are play a fundamental role they are they are an externalization of the brain um and uh they are they um they externalize on the one hand they externalize certain functions of the brain so for instance mathematical ability with a computer uh you know go on and on and on um they're externalizing a module or function that used to occur in the brain now they've been externalized and they happen outside it and if if if we saw this device and we saw what it was doing we would think it was part of the brain so it's a matter of semantics but it's also a matter of uh conceptualization of the fact that there's a myotic or this kind of co-evolution of brain and technology or brain and sociology or brain and um and uh you know whatever politics and that's what my point about iasa was that Wasa not only functions at the neuro uh neuro um synaptic board uh Junction and causes this What's called the hallucinogenic Cascade in the postoptic uh uh membrane and post aptic neuron but it also as a result different kinds of shamanistic rituals certain kinds of religious objects certain kinds of paintings there's a whole genre of of of iosc paintings that are that one can go on the internet and see and that this this so this is an external these are the external manifestation of an internalized um internalized uh brain effect
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.