When I learned Steve Jobs had passed away I was very deeply moved like so many others. I went to bed and around 3 in the morning I realized he was still on my mind and that I was moved more by his death than by the passing of many other notables. There's no doubt Steve Jobs (and his awesome team of coworkers) changed the way that tens of millions, perhaps billions, of people perceive and "see" the world. And it's not only Apple Inc. users. Competitors also had to take into account Apple's ideas when designing their own products.
While this short essay may seem out of the areas that might be considered in my essays, I see some connections that I'd like to put out for further discussion or, I suppose, for immediate dismissal. But please read on.
I've long been interested in the evolution of social behavior and animal emotions and have often wondered if there is non-random assortative mating among nonhuman animals of similar emotional types, personalities, or temperaments. For example, do happy individuals non-randomly select happy individuals as mates, do bold individuals prefer to mate with one another, do shy animals prefer other shy animals as mates, or do creative animals prefer other creative individuals?
What about tool using animals in which there are marked individual variations in creativity? Do technologically oriented individuals who, for example, show unique innovations in making and using tools, prefer mating with one another? For example, do especially innovative tool users among New Caledonian crows or chimpanzees (for a recent comprehensive review of tool behavior in animals see) choose one another as mates? The simple answer is that we really don't know and it would be very difficult, though not impossible, to collect these data in the field. However, assortative or non-random mating involving various behavioral and physical traits is well known in animals, including human animals. Individuals just don't mate with anyone. Assortative mating has even been implicated in autism (see also). Steve Silberman, author of the second essay called "The Geek Syndrome", wonders if math and tech genes are to blame.
Along these lines I wondered if it was possible that our brains are actually being rewired - "Appled" - by all the technology we use and if there is assortative mating among humans who prefer to use Apple or other products because it comes more naturally to them, or non-random mating among those who are non-technological or Luddites. If there is non-random mating then perhaps there's a new form of evolution taking place that I call "Jobsian evolution" and we'd expect to see the results of this way down the road in humans because of our long generation times. Perhaps it will take the form of what evolutionary biologists call disruptive selection (for which there is support for various physical characteristics) in which the techies and the Luddites grow further apart. There are many possible scenarios and patience will be needed. And I'm sure the real picture will be much more complex. However, if our brains are being rewired and there is some degree of non-random mating there are many possibilities looming out there in the future of our species that make for important scientific research and sci-fi speculation.
After I wrote the above text two ideas came to mind. First, I wondered if the word "igenes" existed given Apple Inc.'s proclivity for using "i" this and that and i discovered that it does. Second, I wondered if the word "ibrain" existed and once again I discovered that it does, including a book titled iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. In this book the authors, Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan, argue "digital technology has altered the neural circuitry in human brains and triggered an evolutionary process in just one generation."
I was thrilled to see some of these ideas also were of interest to others and now we have to wait to see if Steve Jobs and his coworkers had a much more significant influence on our species than anyone ever imagined. Will there be more appled ibrains in the future? We'll have to leave the answer to this question to those who follow in our wake.
