Growing Technological Opacity and the Social Brain

Abstract

Thanks to our remarkable ability to transmit technical content, our technologies have become more sophisticated. Intuitively, one might assume that this evolution has imposed greater demands on the technical brain. However, recent neuroscientific research suggests that this evolution has also increasingly engaged the social brain to address the opacity it has generated in making, transactive, and use processes. Here, we build on these findings to design a neurocognitive framework that outlines the role of the social brain in (a) facilitating the transmission of making processes, (b) relying on human experts as extensions of our technical cognition, and (c) engaging with certain technologies—including machines—as if they were intentional biological agents. The framework emphasizes the dynamic interplay between the technical and social brain and explores the mechanisms that drive switching between these networks in response to technological opacity, including bottom-up perceptual cues and causal uncertainty. It also considers how expertise modulates network engagement and guides the allocation of cognitive resources. Overall, this framework provides a unified perspective on how humans navigate complex technological environments, illustrating the coevolution of technical and social cognition and the adaptive strategies that allow us to interact with technologies that we cannot fully understand.