AR and other technologys are allowing us see things that are hidden from our normal sense’s. Not just literally, but conception too.
In this way they extend what mankind has been doing for a long time. Language, Mathematics, Diagrams
By abstracting the world around us we can see it more clearly.
(and yet, one of the hardest tasks is often that of the abstraction/simplification)

Oh, and yes, we are certainly standing on the shoulders of giants. Humanity has a kinda tech-tree of inventions and concepts from which future developments grow.
I often thought it would be interesting to attempt to make a massive diagram…what ideas depended on other ideas to work (or to make them clear).

I don’t believe this stuff makes us “weaker” by any stretch of the imagination. When I was working on my engineering degree, the TI computer/calculators were just coming into usage. Some profs thought it was horrible, that students wouldn’t be able to think if they didn’t do all the little calculations themselves.

Now, if you go to any engineering school, the computer/calculators are mandatory. They allow you to jump to the next level of thinking.

“We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants.” (I forget who said that, but its appropriate.)

The basic intellegence function of pattern recognition doesn’t change no matter how many layers of technology we use. Our brains have a theoretical limit to the number of patterns it can recognize, so we need to use technology to simplify the world-space into easier to understand pieces.

This is a fundamental theory behind Toyota’s constant stride toward visualization. By taking complex subjects and turning them into simple graphs or drawings, anyone can understand them (where no one understands 20 page memos, or has time to read them.)

We teach our new engineers how to put a full project into one 8×11 sheet of paper. Its extremely difficult and frustrating, but it get the point across in less than a minute. Technology and especially augmented reality is a lot like that. Yes, you can get the information in other ways and sometimes its just putting it on a live camera screen, but if it adds more context to the information its a good thing.

Have I disgressed? :)

While I dought we will ever forget who we are in quite that way, as we are externalising our brains more and more I can certainly see AR Specs becoming almost part of who we are…both in what they store and what they show.

What I’m interesting in is just how much our (organic) brains can do when they are augmented both in terms of memory and algorithms to process known patterns.
In some ways would us (our sentience) just become the will-power that steers various automated process’s?
Would we only have to ever work out how to do things once? What if we are linked in a (vark.com) style network so that if anyone knows how to do something, we potentially all do?

Theres certainly arguments along these lines for technology slowly making us individually weaker but collectively much stronger.
I think maybe though, as our brains adapt to this tech it might not be so much losing some ability’s due to lack of use, but rather repurposing them. After all, our brains are incredibly flexible…what was once for finding food and communicating about predictors can now happily do mathematics, coding and enjoy reading sci-fi storys.
So whats next?

If a brain rarely has to remember or rarely has to do repetitive tasks would that new free “thinking time” be spent elsewhere? on what?
Thats what interests me the most.

Sorry for the long comment, this stuff just fascinates me.