Touching Your Own Future: Haptic Tools

"I've had a bit to say in other articles about where haptic research is headed these days, about how the gurus of grasp are taking us by the hand and leading us into synthetic worlds that blur the differences between human and machine, so I thought it was time to kick back and have a look around at the goodies you can buy this afternoon to make life with your PC pretty virtual. But while I was busily investigating the potential of assorted haptic mice and force-feedback steering wheels, I also landed smack in a book by Andy Clark, called Natural Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. It takes the mind-punching point of view that we humans are not just becoming one with the machine, not just tripping down hell's high road that will lead eventually to our all becoming cyborgs; we are cyborgs already. What's more, we always have been.

Because of our cortical plasticity, tools become an extension of not just the human hand but the human brain as well.

Who could resist a theory like that?"