Do the tools we use change us as a species? Can technology redefine our place in the universe? The questions may seem laden with clichés that have emerged within the past 25 years or so, but that’s only because we are finally at a point where we can use our tools and technology to truly influence our perception of reality.

When we were first setting down the foundations of the scientific method, breaking new technological ground as a species, there emerged a rather peculiar myth: the Homunculus. Though the word Homunculus has a variety of meanings, with the simplest interpretation simply defining a diminutive human, the more interesting version of the story has the Homunculus created in an alchemical laboratory. Unthinkable and well into the realm of fantasy at the time, the myth implies that life can be duplicated or even synthesized and that humans can become a greater and more powerful beings through knowledge of technology.

The same premise is echoed again and again through the ages — from Dr. Frankenstein’s monster to the Star Child in the final scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The implication is that that humanity can become something different if only it can achieve unity with the technology it has created.

Today, biology labs the world over create and modify living things. The creation of novel life forms is now old hat in the world of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The myth of the synthetic human came into its own in the mid to late ’80s with the advent and ubiquity of electronic devices. A peculiar brand of science fiction emerged, called Cyberpunk. It generally featured technologically augmented protagonists navigating a world so high-tech it was almost alien. It was only through their familiarity with electronic systems and highly modified bodies that they could prevail.

Cyberpunk brought the Transhumanism movement into the spotlight and disseminated the idea of cyber-augmentation. Transhumanism (sometimes shortened to H+) is a school of thought that took shape in the late 1990s, with a codified declaration produced in 1998. Though vague in its long-term goals, the movement supports technological augmentation of humans as well as propagating openness to new technologies. Transhumanists believe that many of the world’s problems — especially suffering caused by biological reasons (hunger, disease, etc.) — can be cured with technology. Apart from the issues concerning humans, Transhumanists aim to treat all sentient life with respect — from animals to hypothetical sentient AIs.

The group is currently working on a number of projects to further their goals, the two most notable being the WideTag and OpenCog projects.

WideTag aims to harness the power and ubiquity of mobile devices to create “computing systems that integrate sensors, positioning devices and memory with social, Web 2.0-style services.” In other words, they aim to change the social environment we live in by providing us with useful data, an ideology that is already seeping into existing social networking sites.

Whereas WideTag aimed to change the way we operate in our world, OpenCog is attempting to create a sentient AI to experience it with us. It is an open-source AI project that aims to create an artificial intelligence based on the architecture of the human brain. The project’s mission provides an effective summary: “OpenCog is a diverse assemblage of cognitive algorithms, each embodying their own innovations. [ . . . ] The human brain consists of a host of subsystems carrying out particular tasks — some more specialized, some more general in nature — and connected together in a manner enabling them to (usually) synergetically assist rather than work against each other.”

The projects are both still in developmental stages. Most of the Transhumanist issues remain in purely hypothetical stages, attempting to make us plan ahead and providing us with interesting “what if?” scenarios.

To Transhumanists like Lepht Anonym, the possibility of augmenting your natural senses is just too tempting to leave to the world of fiction and hypotheticals. Anonym is “a woman who has spent the last several years learning how to extend her own senses by putting tiny magnets and other electronic devices under her own skin, allowing her to feel electromagnetic fields,” Wired.com writes in an article about this biohacker.

She isn’t the only one either. Steve Haworth, “an American body-modification artist of a similar mindset,” inserted small neodymium discs into his fingertips, “which give off mild electric current when in a electromagnetic field. [ . . .] This current stimulates the fingers’ nerve endings, allowing the bearer to literally feel the shape and strength of electromagnetic fields around power cords or electronic devices.”

Depending on your perspective, these two are either fringe radicals or groundbreaking pioneers. Whatever the case, one thing is certain: we can now functionally modify or augment our senses to be more in tune with our surroundings.

Many other projects have taken the “sixth sense” concept and augmented the way we perceive reality. Some relatively simple projects allow us to visualize magnetic and radio radiation, the most well documented being Jack Schulze’s “Ghost in the Field” radio frequency identification (RFID) visualization technique. By using an LED, a camera and some sensing circuitry, Schulze can create a 3D representation of the effective field emitted by an RFID reader. In effect, the project changes one’s awareness to technology and lets the user perceive otherwise hidden phenomena.

In a similar vein, the Electronic Whiskers/Haptic RADAR project used infrared sensors and vibration motors mounted in a hat to provide the user with information on nearby objects. Upon detecting an object, the hat would activate the motors corresponding to the objects location, thereby informing the user of his or her proximity to something. It may seem useless, but awareness in full 360 degrees would definitely change your perception of reality.

The list goes on. The best documented include glasses that turn black when presented with TV radiation, and clothing (a skirt and a belt) that informs the wearer of magnetic North’s location. These projects are just on the DIY front, made by curious engineers, artists and researchers.

Consumer products that enhance physical experience are also available, just ask the gamers who bought the tactile feedback vest designed to work with the popular Call of Duty series of video games. Talk of health-sensing armbands that will connect with smartphones and keep the user updated with their health statistics and other biometric information are also on the horizon.

The line here between augmented reality and transhumanism becomes blurry, as most consumer products only serve to augment an experience that is, in the end, controlled and predictable. They don’t grant the user new insights into the world around them, but serve only to enhance whatever experience they are provided with. It’s important to remember that where augmented reality aims to bring the virtual into the real, Transhuman technology aims to adapt us to our environment.

It’s also interesting to note that both purveyors of augmented reality and Transhumanism focus on mobile technology. Essentially universal, they are a bridge between the virtual and real, influencing our behavior. Though augmented reality applications and programs are available and easy to find, locating Transhumanist software or products is a little trickier — mostly due to the subtle nature of their effects.

Groups have formed using Facebook and other social media to focus the Transhumanist movement, as noted in their mission statement. Social networking is essentially a primitive embodiment of Transhumanism — it broadens the human experience and opens up otherwise inaccessible methods of interaction.

It’s easy to take for granted how much technology, especially the Internet, shape and broaden our experiences of reality. An ArsTechnica.com article, citing an ethnographic study of Internet usage among children and youth, found that “texting, email, chat and even online gaming have simply been integrated into the normal social routine.” In fact, the report cites a number of cases where friends in the same room would use some sort of online service to extend the circle of people they could interact with.” The findings are almost painfully obvious to us, as we are accustomed to the speed and efficiency of communication technology.

The real effects of the Internet on the way we structure our lives come when we invert the study’s findings: “Friends in the same room cannot extend their circle of interaction due to lack of high-speed communication services.” Once we can mentally erase the entire block of interactions that the Internet provides us with, it is then that we can gauge its impact on our lives. Through digital technology we can become something more — reach out to more people, learn more, expose ourselves to differing and novel viewpoints at speeds and frequencies previously impossible. H+ indeed.

As we head into the first year of a new decade, keep in mind the technological augmentation we take for granted. When memory fails due intoxication, when mental pictures fade, we can turn to the digital copies we keep. Interactions between friends can be tracked precisely by going through the history on whatever social media site you subscribe to. Everywhere we turn — in our vehicles, our homes and in our pockets — we are presented with information that we would simply not have access to if not for technology. The next time you have a few spare minutes, try tracking where your current situational information comes from — where you’re going, how you’ll get there, who’s coming with you. Then try to envision how you’d know any of it if tomorrow all your circuits went dead.