The only reason we don't notice how absolutely interwoven our thinking processes have become with older technologies - pencils, paper, electric light, penicillin, fire - is that they're old, so we've ceased to notice their effects.
Interpretation
We often overlook the impact of older technologies on our thinking processes because they have become a routine part of our lives.
Clive Thompson highlights how older technologies, such as pencils and light, have so deeply integrated into our daily thought processes that their influence is often taken for granted. This invisibility can lead us to forget the foundational role these tools play in shaping our creativity and cognition, emphasizing the significance of recognizing and appreciating the tools that enhance our intellectual experiences.
In practice
In a presentation on the evolution of communication, this quote can emphasize how technology influences our thoughts.
People invent new machines and improve existing ones almost unconsciously, rather as a Somnambulist will go walking in his sleep. The interesting puzzle in our times is that we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence.
A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.
We know in our hearts that technology at its best should make us feel even more human than we currently feel. Sometimes it makes us feel less human.
With all the abundance we have of computers and computing, what is scarce is human attention and time.
The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of noise we ever got, which makes harmful fallacies far more likely.
Ironically, the main task of chess software companies today is to find ways to make the program weaker, not stronger, and to provide enough options that any user can pick from different levels and the machine will try to make enough mistakes to give him a chance.
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