In the past when I thought about cyborgs, images of guys with bionic eyes, or super strong metal arms came to mind. Probably had to do with all the comics I read growing up (Cable was awesome). But I think the real cyborgs have snuck up on us. They’re you and me and anyone with an iphone, blackberry, or other 3G device.

If thirty years ago you told somebody that you could do any of the following things, they’d think you were amazing. Now it's normal:

You can be in contact with anyone anywhere on the planet, instantly.

You can know exactly where you are, to the meter, almost anywhere on the planet.

You can know exactly where I am, to the meter, almost anywhere on the planet (if I want you to).

You can predict the weather with a reasonable degree of certainty (well, sort of).

You can know what’s happening at any time in almost any place in the world – and you can take your pick of sources, international, local, and grassroots.

You can, at the press of a button, know just about anything humans have ever known – from what Pythagoras thought about triangles, to what the most distant stars in the universe look like, to cooking a mean plate of spaghetti.

(Of course, it doesn’t replace expertise or practical knowhow, we’re not quite to the point of Neo learning Jiu-jitsu from a computer. But I was, for example, heading to a party last week and wanted to try some different knots in my tie. In one second an online tutorial had taught me what I needed to do and I was on my way.)

Through services like Amazon and Ebay, you can purchase almost any product that humans make and have it sent to you directly, sometimes within 24hrs.

Find a sign you can't understand? You are now a Rosetta Stone for just about every language you can think of.

You can track-down new people with similar interests and receive instant updates about anything they want to share with you from how they’re feeling, to what they’re doing, to what their cat looks like.

You might even meet your future spouse.

This technology has added a whole layer of complexity to who we are. It reminds me of how Ken Wilber describes holons. One feature of holons is that as they pile on top of each other, they build on what came before. Holons on top of holons, on top of holons. So an organism is composed of cells, which are composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms, etc. If you remove the more complex holon at the top the ones below it don’t die, they keep on going. If you kill a cell, for example, there’re still molecules kicking around.

In the same way, if you took these phones away from us, we wouldn’t die, but we’d be less versatile, efficient, and knowledgeable. A recent study showed that use of this technology is actually altering the way we think and remember. We use the technology so much that we relate to it like an external brain, using it to recall information so we don’t have to. It’s kind of interesting when you think about it. You could even make an argument that the technology is an augmented form of physical evolution. We’ve grown a new appendage with a host of new tricks. You may not have super strength, but if you have an iPhone you're a little bit more than human.

UPDATE: After writing this post and looking for more related media, I came across the video below. It turns out this lady, and her 7min TED video, agree that we’re a bunch of cyborgs. She calls herself a “cyborg anthropologist” and expands the argument to include some things I hadn't thought of.

By the way, are you reading this on your iphone right now?