Photo:  Ellen Sebring, from the film Dive with Paula Josa-Jones

David Abram is the author of The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal. He came to mind as I was listening to Tim O’Reilly’s speech at Google Zeitgeist.   (recommended by Ev Bogue).

The speech was about the global brain and communication technologies.  About how we are becoming sensor enabled humans, gps enabled humans.  I started feeling itchy.  When he talked about our senses being augmented in ways that we are not aware of and the ongoing Google harvesting of our intelligence, I needed a breath.

I opened Becoming Animal at random to page 189 where he says, “Other animals, in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with their sensory surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies.”

Cellular intelligence is hardly new science.  Candace Pert has been talking about this for years.  The way in which our brain lives in every cell or the body, and that every cell is emotional, intelligent, sentient.  I have spent my life enlivening my body, expanding senses, finding more ways to feel, open, receive.  Digital disembodiment makes me nervous.  Digital enhancement of the senses makes no sense to me, at least not yet.

To be continued . . .