Mind technology

Can technology help us to think more clearly?

We find ourselves increasingly immersed in our digital worlds, surrounded by devices and tools, our minds constantly impacted by streams of new information. It's often difficult to keep up, and one could easily feel swamped by the relentless flow. This a similar experience for hundreds of millions of other individuals around the world.

Personally, I don't find it that onerous. That constant flow of information can be daunting, but I have learnt to dip in and out, as though it were a stream flowing by. I am constantly learning new things, discovering new people, being challenged to think in new ways using this stream of information. That wouldn't have happened, at least not as extensively, if I did not have access to my digital tools. The tools I use are a kind of mind technology, a means of extending my cognitive capabilities, enhancing my thinking, memory and recall.

Some might say that I am over-reliant upon technology. I'm perfectly relaxed about that. I don't see myself as a cyborg - one of Andy Clarke's cybernetic organisms enhanced by - and fully dependent upon, technology. Nor do I view my habituated use of technology as detrimental, as dark and fearful as the high priests of doom such as Nicholas Carr would have us believe. This is my choice, certainly not something that is being imposed upon me against my will.  I know I can think more clearly when I use certain deliberately selected tools, while others enable me to recall things I could not otherwise remember. I'm able to organise my content effectively using other specific tools. Still others enable me to perform mundane and repetitive tasks while freeing me up to concentrate on the more important things that demand my attention during the day. If I were to suddenly lose these tools it would not stop me from doing what I wish to do. It would take me a lot longer though, and I would have to divert more cognitive energy away from the core stuff.

My mind technology is embodied in and across a vast biological network of individuals - the connected minds that I call my personal learning network (PLN). They are numerous, and I know many of them personally. Others are familiar to me from repeated online contact. Many more are less familiar still, but each has a role to play and knowledge to pass on. Extended beyond my own PLN, this living network and the tools at its disposal encapsulates all of the knowledge that humankind has accumulated, knowledge that it is constantly being updated, revised, extended. It provides access for all to these vast resources through a bewildering array of device choices, a spectrum of possibilities. The people, devices, connections and knowledge constitute the world wide web - a digital sea upon which float the aspirations of this and future generations.

As recently as the mid 1990s, the World Wide Web did not exist, at least not in as ubiquitous and accessible a form as it does now. It was only at the turn of this century that we began to understand what was going to be possible with social networking on the Web. It was only at the start of this new millennium that we began to harness the power of new cognitive technologies - the smart mobile phones, touch screen technologies and convergent devices that now make up the familiar terrain, the day-to-day objects we so rely on for our work, commerce, entertainment and relationship maintenance.

These tools are indeed cognitive technologies - mind tools that help us to learn new things, to seek out new ideas and new concepts, to boldly take us - who knows where? They not only provide us with all the information, knowledge and learning we will ever need, they actually shape our minds in new ways too. Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan wasn't the only one to notice the effect media have on thinking. Where McLuhan saw the movie as a medium that transports us from linear (story telling) toward configuration (of speed, space and time), he also believed that it is the attributes of the medium, rather than its content that shapes our expectations. McLuhan never lived to see the Web, but if he had, he would no doubt have seen the extension of hyperlinked affordances toward non-linearity and beyond.

This poses a further question: Have the multi-dimensional possibilities of the Web forged a generation of non-linear thinkers, or has the Web simply been fashioned in such a way that it reflects the natural evolution of our collective human minds? Such a conveniently synergetic relationship between mind and tool certainly makes it difficult to detect the join between functionality and perception. Mind technology it certainly is, and richly social too. We would be poorer without it. With it, we can be enslaved or we can be liberated. Whichever direction we choose, there will be hundreds of millions of others to keep us company.

As a wise man recently said: "If you think the Web is simply a place to look up information, you are sadly mistaken".

Photo by Erik Drost


Mind technology by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.