Smarter Than You Think

July 1, 2013
Does technology make us lazy, incapable of thinking smartly about solutions to cultural problems? Does it make us shallower thinkers, ever reliant on computers to help us mold our responses to any issues? In this optimistic, fast-paced tale about the advent of technology and its influence on humans, journalist Thompson addresses these and other questions. He admits that we often allow ourselves to be used by facets of new technologies and that we must exercise caution to avoid this; yet, he demonstrates, digital tools can have a huge positive impact on us, for they provide us with infinite memory, the ability to discover connections between people, places, or ideas previously unknown to us, and new and abundant avenues for communication and publishing. For example, Thompson shares the tale of Gordon Bell, who walks around equipped with a small fish-eye camera and a tiny audio recorder. Bell uses these devices to record every moment of his life, which he records on a “lifelog” on his laptop. Because of these devices, Bell—and we, if we embrace the technology—lives in a world of infinite memory. Using technology also helps us make connections, not only with old friends on Facebook or other social media but with the world around us as we search for knowledge and facts about it. Thompson points out that “transactive memory”—which arises out of our need to understand details and to connect to larger sets of facts outside our own limited social or familial setting—allows “us to perform at higher levels, accomplishing acts of reasoning that are impossible for us alone.” In the end, Thompson believes, these features of digital tools will allow us to think more deeply and become more deeply connected both as individuals and as a society.

July 15, 2013
A sprightly tip of the hat to the rewards and pleasures--and betterments--of our digital experiences. Who, asks Wired and New York Times Magazine contributor Thompson, hasn't felt a twinge of concern? How many times have we let Google feed us the answer to all manner of random inquiries? Indeed, does Google allow our memory muscles to grow flabby? How much is important to retain without a crib card? How much byzantine, brain-busting junk do we need at our fingertips or leave dangling at the tip of our tongues? Thompson is a firm believer in the school of digital information. Why not offload all the minutiae and free up the brain for bigger questions? Then let the computer serve as the external memory, find connections and accelerate communication and publishing. The author also argues that, despite all the excesses, writing on the Internet encourages discipline and economy of expression--if not harking back to the golden age of letter writing, at least making people put thought to screen. In addition, think of all the stuff that computers do in a wink--data crunching, calling you to task in the word cloud for repetitiveness, and more. Computers also bring analysis, logic and acuity to the table, while humans bring intuition, insight, psychology and strategy, as well as sentience. Near the beginning of the book, Thompson discusses the mind vs. computer dilemma in the context of chess: "The computer would bring the lightning fast--if uncreative--ability to analyze zillions of moves, while the human would bring intuition and insight, the ability to read opponents and psych them out." A well-framed celebration of how the digital world will make us bigger, rather than diminish us.

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September 1, 2013

In the face of concerns over whether digital connectivity has made us generally lazy and shallow, Thompson (columnist, Wired) investigates and demonstrates how technology can be used to improve the ways we think and learn. For instance, he looks at the educational impact of the not-for-profit free online video tutorial platform Khan Academy and describes how its student dashboard system, a teaching platform for instructors, has considerably improved teaching and learning. Thompson includes compelling examples of how technology is furthering scientific discovery. For example, he writes, neuroscientists have been seeking to understand protein folding; an online protein-folding game helped allow them to understand the phenomenon when thousands of gamers found new and interesting strategies by collaborating online. VERDICT Thompson succeeds in making the case for digital technologies enhancing how we learn, discover, and collaborate. A comparable work on crowd-sourced activism and the benefits of Web 2.0 technologies is Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. A well-written case for the power and advantages of new digital technologies and possibilities for human achievement, this book will appeal to a technically savvy crowd as well as to nontech readers interested in how adopting new technologies may better their lives.--Jim Hahn, Univ. of Illinois Lib., Urbana

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2013
In this excursion into techno-optimism, Thompson discusses computerized, interconnected social activity. Relying on journalism's staple of the human-interest story, he describes individuals' experiences of exploring the Internet in pursuit of their interests. In Thompson's examples, those pursuits range from retrieving a personal memory to critiquing TV shows to finding a house for sale to researching proteins to organizing political movements. The commonalities Thompson finds among all those searches are prodigious data storage-and-retrieval capacities and the latent presence in cyberspace of someone interested in what you're interested in. Connecting interest with information animates Thompson's many anecdotes, whose motif of the delight felt by strangers or long-lost friends upon discovering a mutual concern propels his belief that Twitter, Facebook, and social-media sites built by amateurs positively motivate people to think and write better. To criticisms that social media degrade or isolate people, Thompson ripostes with studies or classroom examples that show improvements in learning and the creation of collaborative groups. A lively presenter with a sunny outlook, Thompson will engage readers drawn to the sociology of technology.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)