"Tank: …now, we're supposed to start with these operation programs first, that's a major boring shit. Let's do something more fun. How about combat training.
Neo: Jujitsu? I'm going to learn Jujitsu?... Holy shit.
Tank: Hey Mikey, I think he likes it. How about some more?
Neo: Hell yes. Hell yeah."
― The Matrix
The unmitigated accuracy in inputting and outputting data through different medium interfaces (as well as our own technological fluency in using and utilizing information resources in itself) signals the multiplicity of subjectivities we easily form, participate in and are subjected to in our everyday lives. Humanity is on the path to significantly accelerate the evolution of intelligent life beyond its current human form and human limitations.
Kernel, IBM, Neuralink, Facebook—all work to develop some kind of cortical interface by implanting microscopic brain electrodes that in the future may upload and download thoughts to enhance human abilities. Even smallest advancement of this technology would trigger bio-technological enhancement of human beings in automation and cyberinteraction, enabling data access to web networks and wireless communication in real-time, directly from our minds.
As alerting of what impact these advancements might have on human consciousness, in the end, all existing technologies work to fulfill our innate human desire—to stay closely connected and be a part of a known and a similar. The increased connectivity and provided time-space distanciation , where for the first time we have the ability to be connected instantaneously and aware of all other people at all times, has been already shaping a “global neural net”, along which ideas spread and come to fruition at previously unmatched rates, for years. If human beings, looking to implement connectivity to the furthest reaches of technological development, continue to make advances (and we will) in interpersonal technology, defining our social individuality neither starts nor ends in the boundaries of our synthetic skin. Not only through the current social networks, that are now the primary platforms of self-making and self-representation, individuals in data age sustain their integration into the society through the means of smart phones, online banking systems, internet profiling, or ‘digital nomad’ occupations. Considering that a non-credit card holder can not even book rooms in hotels anymore and a non-credit score individual can not obtain a credit card, we can say that our subjective positioning within the social, economic, and political systems are now almost strictly digital. In entering this infinitesimally deep and complex, venturing-too-far-down ‘rabbit hole’, humanity is ready to seek and adopt its hybrid anatomy (artificial and organic), enabling a far greater utilization of the means of communication technologies than any modern human has.
With significant difference in capabilities to process data in our hybrid state, such technology inevitably leads to rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, possibly, to a level where the difference between individual consciousness and artificial intelligence is blurred. Seeking the ability to enhance our parts infers that soon we will be offered options to alter our bodies through high-functioning prostheses. Whatever that initial reason would be (evening the odds with artificial intelligence, finding a cure for physical and mental disorders, or just continuing our natural evolution), we are indeed moving towards a future of iteratively reproduced congregate bodies.
Technological advancement in bringing human intelligence to a new level reminds me of a reverse ‘conscious-competence’ model. The model represents human desire to beat the “unknown unknowns”, whatever the means are. It views human learning along two dimensions, consciousness and competence, moving in reverse through a four-stage progression from unconscious competence (the individual has had so much practice or was born with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily; as a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task and the individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned) to conscious competence (the individual understands or knows how to do something, however, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration; it may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill) to conscious incompetence (though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit; the making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage) to, finally, human unconscious incompetence (the individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit; they may deny the usefulness of the skill; the individual may never recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, because the stimulus to learn is unknown and cognitively unreachable). But we will never accept our 'human' unconscious incompetence.
In a typical human-like way, the possibility of extending our thinking beyond a physical body has been out there for a while and can be already found in the works of Aristoteles, Plato and Descartes, assuming that the rational self had an ‘inner’ relationship with the mind and an ‘outer’ relationship with the body. This ensured that the body was perceived as part of environment and not as part of the individual self. Consequently, the ultimate dream in cartesian dualism is disembodiment. Elon Musk's ‘neural lace’ would be the ultimate dream for Descartes. The possibility of escaping the body would pave the way for entirely pure thought reasoning.
But as much as drastically technology progresses and alters socially, politically, economically, scientifically acceptable frameworks (involving human biology), it is, in the end, consistent with the history and nature of society and constitutes just a simple advancement supply (creating connection) that depends on human demand (being connected), as any other advancements do.