The Loss of Terra Firma: Fragmented Consciousness

Whether sleeping or awake, the human mind requires a causal anchor. The 1872 observation that the mind “cravings for and effort after system and unity”* remains true, but the tools we use are now bypassing that effort.

If we continue to outsource the synthesis of our reality to black-box systems, the “unconscious cerebration” that once formed our dreams will have nothing left to work with but glitches. We must understand these causal effects on cognition before the loss of mental terra firma becomes permanent.

The introduction of profound cognitive and neurological shifts into the population without longitudinal study is happening over and over at scale.

The link between the unconscious effort to synthesize data (dreaming) and the conscious effort to manage complex systems (coding) needs immediate exploration. The effects are shaping us all - real time. There are no equivalency of drug trials with technology. There should be. This is called Technological Iatrogenesis (causation of a disease), or, more specifically, Cognitive Bio-Hacking Without Consent.

We are acquiring cognitive debt that long term has the potential to be catastrophic to humans.

*1872 work Dreams as Illustrations of Involuntary Cerebration, Frances Power Cobbe