Vacuum cleaner wars continue. With clenched teeth I push a wailing upright around the house, watching a contraption which used to take no prisoners catapult crumbs crazily across the room on a stinging trajectory for anywhere except the cyclone-thingy, the round transparent cylinder designed to be Azkaban for dust.
The vacuum cleaner I am using is a mere henchman: a second in command to The General, the thorough, methodical carpet-plumper which laughs in the face of debris.
The General, a great imposing purple upright, is absent on medical grounds. Rather than buy a new cleaner for the thick-pile carpets of my house, my husband has taken it- or should I say him – to a repair shop, where his motor will be replaced and he should theoretically have a new lease of life.
And so I am left with his aide, the whining yellow dirt redistribution device. As I vacuum, I swear red wisps of smoke begin to emerge from my ears.
But why so frustrating? Surely a few crumbs will not hurt, until The General returns from leave?
To answer this, it’s necessary to take a close look at what happens when any of us uses a device which is not part of us, but which we wield with our hands.
Like a toothbrush.
When we stand in front of that mirror, scheming wildly about the challenges the day must surely bring, we life the toothbrush and put it deftly into our mouth. Not once do we need to check where our mouth is, or indeed our arm.
And there’s a reason for this. In 1911, two British neurologists, Henry Head and Gordon Morgan, developed pioneering research into the sensory system. And they outed a map which has been in our heads for millions of years.
They labelled it the ‘Body Schema. It’s a representation- a map- of our bodies, which takes incoming sensory impulses, and uses prior knowledge of how the body acts to plot its movements in space.
Your brain’s map of your arm actually alters as you hold the toothbrush. It includes the brush as an extension of the arm itself. In effect, the brush has become part of the arm.
In the same way, The General was an extension of myself. It was an exacting limb, showing the crevices of the carpet in my house no mercy. It pummelled the carpets and ousted every tiny intruder, every trace of my disreputable dog, every small lego brick dropped by my three-year old nephew, Big Al.
And now it seems I have another limb, and it just won’t do. Is it possible we could experience a mismatch between the extension we have been accustomed to, and a new lesser limb?
Perhaps this is what old age feels like. When one’s limbs will no longer fulfil the edicts of the schema laid out inside one’s head.
The extra limbs we use are legion: you will have a list of your own. The car; the pen; my flute, or a piano; a hose; literally anything we operate becomes part of our body map, it seems.
And I have been aware of a growing part of my schema for some time now. For better or for worse, it’s there in my mind, like a Hyde within Dr Jekyll. One never knows when it might surface, and it needs no potion to out it. Rather, it requires a constant speed of megabytes per minute.
Because I would swear, on my sacred iPad, that my schema has extended to incorporate the internet.
And I’ll tell you for why. Once, I knew very little, and what I knew must needs come from the library. It was laborious, it was selective, and life was not then so much fun as it is now.
Asking a question was a ponderous task: the answer might lie weeks away, and I was a person of little patience.
When the Internet first arrived, it was like the Wild West. It was uncharted territory peopled by slightly dodgy pioneers. I distinctly remember surfing, way back in the shady days of 1997, and thinking: no-one’s here yet. There are no cyber cities, no virtual Main Streets. Just a bunch of wild-eyed enthusiasts who managed to get here and hitch their wagons before anyone else.
But it soon changed. Now I can visit anywhere I like, trawl through records and histories and, within reason, find any text I want within seconds. And – call this an Old Wives Theorem – I can feel my schema craftily incorporating the whole cyber-world as its own.
It’s a heady thought: it may be poppycock. And like that old glass-of-wine-a-day, there are studies which predict both arcadia and hades if it is followed through.
But like Dr Jekyll, the effects are easily identified within. What happens next: only time will tell.
Image from here, a site which for some time charted cybergeography: a subject which deserves a whole blog to itself.
Kate Shrewsday 
Only today I was wondering whether I’m smarter or dumber since the Internet entered my life. It never occurred to me that we have become as one.
“…the whining yellow dirt redistribution device.” Exactly. Best wishes for the General’s rapid recovery.
He’s due back on the fourteenth, Kathy! How will I ever last out??
Becoming as one with the internet…there’s something unsettlingly Tron about that…
I distinctly remember that learning curve when II took myself on a ‘European Computer Driving License’ course at the local adult ed centre, all those years ago. Can’t quite remember when, except that I was aware the the children already knew and understood more than me about the workings of a computer.
I remember learning new things and having to understand each stage and practice it time and time again. And then gradually I’d have ‘aha’ moments, when I’d suddenly realise that I’d done a three staged what ever with even thinking about it.
And now? Almost automatic.
Strange isn’t it, this learning business.
And now it seems instinctive, part of my every day process, so to speak…I completely understand where you’re coming from.
It is strange: twenty years ago the internet was an elite stamping ground for governments and universities….so glad we’ve got it now. Life is such fun 🙂
Shame Kate, long life to The General. Only 13 more sleeps and he’ll be back.
I’m scratching tally charts on the wall, Cindy.
Fascinating stuff about the Body Schema, Kate – mine, too, incorporates the internet, so I’m not looking forward to heading back to university essays today for which we are permitted to use the internet for only a small percentage of source material – ho hum
Erk! Small percentage of internet use! The very words strike ice into my very being!
Still: I find the internet has a wealth of leads which can take one to texts elsewhere….good luck with that one…
Wonderful post, Kate.
The internet has changed the face of research. I may not always get the “correct” answer . . . but I get a reasonably acceptable answer in a fraction of the time that it used to take to track down esoteric knowledge.
Especially enjoyed:
* methodical carpet-plumper which laughs in the face of debris
* the whining yellow dirt redistribution device
Glad you enjoyed it, Nancy 🙂 You make a good point: I recently signed up for a range of encyclopaedias, including Britannica, to help my research. But I find Wiki, with all its many faults, has a breadth and wide set of perspectives unparalleled anywhere else. And it does us good to know that the stuff we’re reading needs a dose of healthy scepticism.
‘Silver Surfer’ – I like that and it’s me! I do hope that they are right re Alzheimer’s. I was around with the first computers and remember the clumsy Word Processing programmes until MS took over. I think things have improved tremendously in our approach to acquiring knowledge quicker and easier than ever before. But still there aren’t enough hours in the day!!! This was a wonderful post, Kate. Good luck with getting The General back in the harness.
Thank you, Denise 🙂 I await his return with something approaching hysteria.
Fascinating, Kate 🙂 Now I think about it – which I never have before – it’s amazing that we don’t batter our gums while our minds are distracted. Ain’t the body a wonderful thing?
It is, Tilly 🙂 So complex!
Love your take on the internet explosion/extension, Kate 🙂 It’s weird to imagine where we might be in a decade or two… All the best with the General!
Thanks Naomi 🙂 who can tell what the future holds….
(PS if you lived closer you could borrow my Sebo…. )
. . . and this whole internet/cyber/technology thing (thing?) is still in its infancy. I’m just as pleased as punch that I could figure out how to set up a blog all by my lonesome. It took days for my kids and husband to figure out I wasn’t joking and that I was really a blogger, an extensive of myself. Now, If I can just figure out how to program the new coffee pot.
🙂 Good luck with that one, Penny!
Wonderful post! My body schema has a glitch when it comes to my glasses; either it forgets to add them and I look everywhere only to find them on my face, or it forgets to omit them and I try to push them up my nose when they aren’t there. I wonder if the General’s doctor could help?
Do you know, that happens to me too, Elizabeth, how interesting! I wonder what’s happening there…does the term absent-minded include a scheme gone AWOL too?
Time to go digging…
Now you have me nervous about the next time I use my chain saw.
I am quite sure it is safe with your schema, Col 😀
i try very hard not to let house-cleaning devices feel at all at home in my hands. to me they are instruments of torture and must be kept at a decent distance
I do concur, Sidey, with all my heart. As soon as I win the lottery I shall be getting someone to manage the whole menagerie for me.