Extended Nervous System
Definition
The extension of perception and sensory feedback outside the physical body.
Physical Extensions
For instance, one's perception changes when entering a vehicle by extending from the edges of the self to the edges of the vehicle. "The car [is thus an] extension of the foot instead of the car as a satellite part of the home: or the tendency for appliances to impose their presence as against the psychological need for 'cosy' or 'friendly' objects"[1]
Digital Extensions
One who runs a server and hosts websites has a nervous system that extends to those sites. When the site goes down, they may be physiologically affected. They are running an organism. Google Analytics is a sensing network that acts as an extended nervous system detecting clicks on the extension of one's identity. Emotional circuits give us pleasure. That we construct things in the world that help us do this, including social networks.
The realm of the cell phone is a place that may be heard, and only liminally lived in. Augé defines the idea of the communication network as one that lies on the plane of extraterrestrial space.[2] Thus the cell phone is a liminal extra-terrestrial space, or a space that is actually a place removed from place (the isolation of urban reality) that can be accessed simply by logging onto the Actor Network of cell phone users. It is natural that so many disconnected individuals would so quickly adopt a technology that allows them some semblance of former society, even though it is mediated by technology and a payment plan.
