Marshall McLuhan wrote that all our tools are extensions of our natural abilities. The hammer extends the fist. The knife or sword extends our fingernails. Telescopes extend our vision. PA systems extend our voices. His seminal work is even titled "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man."
Paraphrasing John Culkin, McLuhan wrote in UM: “we become what we behold... we shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.”
Super heroes represent the OPPOSITE of that cultural process of extension. With notable exceptions, super heroes internalize our tools. Superman doesn't need a tool belt because his abilities include super strength, x-ray & heat vision, etc. He doesn't need armor because his skin in invulnerable. He doesn't need a airplane because he can fly on his own. And so forth. (Yes, I know Batman doesn't have any super powers. His ability is the ultimate extension of normal humans. All his Bat gear makes him a super hero. As Joker/Jack Nicholson said in the 1989 Batman movie, "Where does he get all those great toys?")
What does that have to do with us? For the first time in human history our tools now allows us to extend our mental abilities, not just our physical abilities or our senses. Not only do computers relieve us of mental tasks ("computer" was the term first applied to human calculators), they allow us to offload those tasks, including memorizing, calculating and everything else they can or will someday do. How many reading this know by heart all their family member's phone numbers and how many rely on speed dialing?
Recently a group of computer scientists investigated which was the better chess player, the humans or the computers. Their surprising result was neither. Chess players who partnered with computers did better than computers or human alone. Their term for this human/machine hybrid was "centaur":
"In 2005, an advanced chess tournament took place that allowed any combination of humans and computers. Steven Cramton and Zackary Stephen, who only held amateur status in Elo (named after physics professor Arpad Elo) chess rankings, took their regular desktop computers and squeezed them for their purposes. They won that tournament against chess masters with superior chess ratings and even superior hardware and software. Both players had leveraged their expertise to align computing power to win chess games. They created a superior team comprising humans and machines. In essence, a new form of chess intelligence had emerged. Kasparov concluded, 'Human strategic guidance combined with the tactical acuity of a computer was overwhelming.'"-- From computer to centaur- Cognitive tools turn the rules upside down
We all carry smart phones now. They aren't really "phones", they are pocket computers that happen to have a cell phone app. We off-load all sorts of information to our smart phones/pocket computers and come to depend on them to make calls, keep us up-to-date on appointments, purchase products and entertain us, among many other possibilities. Classical Batman with all the toys his billions could buy would have killed to have access to the capabilities of the little iPhone we all own. Smart phones/pocket computers give us powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal humans.
It is my hunch that we are all becoming human/computer hybrids, i.e.. centaurs. We are all become "super" in the sense of enhanced abilities afforded by our centaur status. Hence, we contemplate this transformation through the stories we tell ourselves about the gods and superheroes of previous cultural paradigms.
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