Rethinking Alsberg: Cognitive Offloading and Technologically Induced Cognitive Diminishment in the Era of Digital ICTs

Abstract

This paper revisits Paul Alsberg’s theory of Körperausschaltung (bodily deactivation) to address contemporary questions about cognitive offloading in the context of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs), particularly large language models (LLMs). Alsberg’s 1922 work Das Menschheitsrätsel, republished in 1937 in German and re-written in 1970 in English, offers a prescient framework for understanding how technical artifacts fundamentally reshape human cognitive capacities by transferring functions from organic to extra-organic media. We situate Alsberg’s philosophy within recent empirical research on technologically induced cognitive diminishment (TICD), the Extended Mind Thesis, and studies of LLMs in educational contexts. Drawing on Fasoli’s taxonomy of cognitive artifacts (substitutive, complementary, and transformative), we analyse different modes of human-AI interaction and their implications for cognitive development. The paper demonstrates that contemporary digital technologies represent an intensification of long-standing technogenetic processes and argues for design principles and policies that minimize harmful cognitive substitution while fostering transformative integration. Rather than framing the question as enhancement versus diminishment, we propose a more nuanced understanding of cognitive transformation that recognizes technology as constitutive of human cognition itself.