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We humans have been born with fantastically powerful mental equipment for millions of years. This brain of ours has allowed us to do things that no other creature on earth has ever done. This brilliant, wonderful brain is what I will refer to as “the standard mind”. It comes with each human as standard equipment.

But one of the most amazing tricks that we learned early on in our evolutionary career, was that we could improve on that great mind of ours. Language was one of our first improvements. With that development, we could conceptualize things we had not actually seen. We could pass knowledge from person to person, even from generation to generation, in a vicarious way. Due to language, a body of knowledge could build over time — each person didn’t have to start from scratch with direct learning.

Now language is so intrinsic in our makeup that it could be debated that it comes with the package of “the standard mind”.

But then, somewhere along the line, a new improvement was developed — written language. That’s getting pretty clearly into the area of “the virtual mind”. This is any kind of device we’ve added, external to our built-in gray matter, that allows us to perform mental functions (like remembering, calculating, cogitating, communicating, planning, and all the other things our brains are for) in a way not possible otherwise.

Writing opened up a whole new can of worms! With that invention we could communicate over time and over distance. We could put a thought into a form that would not change over the ages. We could record profound philosophical wisdom or a grocery list. While language allowed mankind to “reach higher by standing on the shoulders of giants“, written language multiplied the effect.

From there, it was just a hop, skip and a jump to DayTimers, computers, PDAs, and iPhones. We have “memory systems”, “getting things done” systems, forms, procedures, checklists. There are filing systems, organizational systems, journals, ledgers, calendars. All these we have created to extend the reach of our “standard mind”. This is “The Virtual Mind”.