Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better
Written by Clive Thompson
Narrated by Jeff Cummings
4/5
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About this audiobook
A brilliant examination into how the internet is profoundly changing the way we think.
In this groundbreaking book, Wired writer Clive Thompson argues that the internet is boosting our brainpower, encouraging new ways of thinking, and making us more not less intelligent as is so often claimed.
Our lives have been changed utterly and irrevocably by the rise of the internet and it is only now that we can begin to analyse this extraordinary phenomenon. The author argues that as we rely more and more for machines to help us think, our thinking itself is becoming richer and more complex. We’re able to learn more, retain it longer, to write in curious new forms, and even to think entirely new types of thoughts.
Outsmart is filled with stories of people who are living through these profound technological changes. In a series of postcards from the near future, we meet characters such as Gordon Bell, an ageing millionaire who is saving a digital copy of everything that happens to him, and Eric Hovitz, one of the world’s leading artificial-intelligence researchers, who is creating software that is designed to let your computer sense your mood and then predict when you’re going to be most productive at work.
Lucidly written and argued, Outsmart is a breathtaking original look at our Brave New World.
Clive Thompson
Clive Thompson is a longtime contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired. He is the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better.
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Reviews for Smarter Than You Think
65 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book that challenges the notion of technology is ruining us and our children. Worth reading.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I really liked this book. I had previously read The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and found it very odd. Carr went through his book describing how every time a new technology appears everyone freaks out about how it is ruining humanity, but in the end it doesn't, and it ends up being an important tool we use, and then Carr concludes but this time it is real. The internet will make us lose our ability to think deeply and this is horrible.
Thompson on the other hand draws the more logical conclusion that the internet does cause us to think differently, but it allows us to do some powerful things that are good. He tempers this optimism with acknowledgement that the internet isn't good for everything and sometimes you need to disconnect in order to get something done, but that is how new tools work--you pick and choose how and why you use them. He then goes on to provide interesting anecdotes on what areas the internet and the power of group-think excel and where they struggle.
Overall I found that I related very well to what he said about using computers as an extra place to store memories. I often find myself storing information in my head as search terms, versus the specific facts themselves. Another example is that I am good at math, but have a very difficult time doing math in my head. I just can't seem to hold more than a couple numbers in my head at a time. If I hadn't been allowed to use a calculator throughout school I probably would not have ended up as a computer programmer. - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Shallower than you think.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don't really remember where or why I acquired this book, but it's been on my shelves for a bit. The sort of a book that clearly has an agenda, so it's not looking for arguments against its thesis -- but as our society is currently swamped with the opposite message -- that smartphones are ruining our memories, our relationships, our children, our ability to be in the moment, etc., etc., this feels like a needed counterpoint.Thompson comes up with a lot of fascinating stories, studies, anecdotes. One of my favorites is the section on how humanity has always externalized parts of its memory/thinking. From the earliest designation of one person in the community to be the "storyteller," to the advent of the printing press and its abundance of books, to the married couple where one knows where they get the car fixed and the other remembers the names of actors and movies they've seen -- and each explicitly stops trying to remember the other's sphere of knowledge -- leaving more "room" for their own.It's good to think about the ways that the strengths of human brains can be paired with the strength of computers to make new leaps and feats possible. A very interesting read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a very interesting book. It show us how technology does not make us as stupid as we believe it does, but what allow us to do is to interact in a very different way that we did before, it allow us to create things in a different way and to work in a new, and many times more effective manner. The book does not stop with just the good side of technology it also show us some of the problems that we have because of it and some of the limitations (or things that seems like it) that the constant use of technology produce in the different task that we have in our life. Is a very interesting perspective of technology and the different uses that it has.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The author illustrates how the advent of digital technology and the internet have impacted communication on many different levels. He provides a very diverse set of examples, from the Arab Spring to elementary school classrooms.
The author does an excellent job of describing the nature of interpersonal and social communication, which has changed little over thousands of years. He then shows how technology is making this communication much more available and widespread. He does all this without speaking down to the reader and without being pedantic.
If you want to get a glimpse into how the next generation will use these technologies, and why you should be encouraged, I suggest you read this book. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well written and researched. Easy to understand. A positive argument for all that social media that surrounds us daily. Popular thought might be that the ability to locate information so easily is actually making us dumber, Thompson argues the opposite. We can actually remember more of what is important to us leaving trivial matters to the Internet. He argues that allowing cloud storage to keep our memories, we know we can access them readily. But there are moments in our lives that are reserved just in our brains that are not digitally retrievable. Technology allows this to happen. A married couple to can collectively remember more together than individually. Ever have a "tip of my tongue" moment that drives you crazy when you can't recall something. Let Google relieve your stress. It is always there waiting for you to ask your question.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5There are lots of doom'n'gloom laments out there about how technology -- specifically, computers, smartphones, and the internet -- are dumbing us down, distracting us to the point where we can never concentrate on one thing for more than five minutes, alienating us from face-to-face contact, destroying our privacy, and inundating us all with relentless waves of the obnoxious and banal. Clive Thompson, while he readily admits that these technologies have downsides that should not be ignored, also thinks it's important to consider the other side of things: the way the internet can connect us to each other and improve our lives and our societies. To this end, he considers a wide variety of topics, from the way team-ups between computer and human chess players can be better at the game than either is individually, to how recording technology can help us augment our fallible memories, to the remarkable results math tutoring programs can achieve in schools, to the use of Facebook to organize protest movements. Not to mention a thoughtful consideration of why all those tweets about what your friends had for breakfast might not actually be as useless as they look. He doesn't go to Polyanna-ish extremes on any of this, however; he is as skeptical of claims that Twitter will bring about world peace as he is about claims that Google is completely destroying our memories and leaving us with blank, empty brains. Most of the general topics and many of the specific examples he talks about here were already familiar to me, but some were fascinatingly new, and even when he's going over ground I found highly familiar, he does so in a marvelously lucid and compulsively readable way. And I do mean the "compulsively" quite literally. I kept reaching the end of a chapter, thinking I should get up and do something else, and then turning the page and reading on, anyway.Definitely recommended to anyone who wants a little more insight into this crazy, digital modern world of ours, or a different perspective on all that grumbling commentary about kids today ruining their minds, and possibly the future of the world, with all that semi-literate texting.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Another writer reporting on a hodge podge of things based on a central premise. If you work or are even just a bit up to date about the internet world, this book will really disappoint you. A bunch of correlations were made so that it will fit the central premise but not evidence for me. Maybe I'm just too ingrained in the industry that I don't find any of his presumptions surprising or enlightening.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Clive Thompson’s Smarter Than You Think is a refreshing approach to the proliferation of modern technology. Many writers and thinkers are quick to point out the inherent dangers and trials of each new technology, with positive applications treated as interesting but presumed to be already known to audiences. Thompson proves that this is certainly not the case. Drawing numerous examples across many disciplines from the last decade, he provides a well-nuanced perspective on some of the best uses of our developing tech.Thompson’s central point is that our technology is not actually making us lazy, foolish, unconnected and unengaged with the world around us. Quite the contrary, his examples cite frequent instances where individuals and small groups have effectively used the technology available to us to be active and engage in what appears to be an increasingly disconnected world. Beginning with human-machine synthesis, Thompson explores the current state of how machines are removing barriers to deeper, more meaningful thinking. He examines how we think, remember, consume media, seek out intellectual challenges, learn, perceive, and connect to each other, all relative to the past, present, and future potential state of technology, and his reasoned conclusions are not nearly as grim as other commentators have led us to believe.Beyond this, the book is exceedingly accessible. The moments of personalization add a touch of direct connection to the reader; these are not things that are happening in the abstract, “out there”, but are absolutely present in the world we live in. This is not high technology controlled by government and big business, but rather what is and can be done by the average person. In fact, that is a large part of the point that Thompson drives towards, and it runs as a subtext throughout most of the work. For those wanting more in-depth information on any of the many sources used, the notes at the end provide amply annotated references.One of the greatest flaws of the book is a dismissal of the neuroscientific research being done in the modern age that examines the impact between technology and biology, but Thompson is up front about this. In the very first chapter he acknowledges that he will not be discussing this aspect, which has the unfortunate side effect of removing a number of interesting topics (among them, the use of technology to augment the physical components of our body, downloading digital copies of our brains, and so on). However, in doing so Thompson is able to address a much broader range of topics, and his fundamental point (that technology is actually making us better connected and able to think more deeply) doesn’t suffer from the aforementioned absence.This book is of great interest to anyone who enjoys good analysis of technology, culture, and modern social issues. The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge, Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal, and You Are Not a Gadget, by Jaron Lanier are all excellent texts either to read as a follow-up to this book, as they deal with similar themes from different perspectives.