How Technology Is Changing Our Minds For The Better Pdf

Thompson, C. (2013). Smarter than you call back: How technology is changing our minds for the better. New York: The Penguin Printing.

Information technology is piece of cake to find books proclaiming that the end of the globe is herre: machines will take over. In this engaging and provocative book, Clive Thompson argues but the reverse. Aye, machines are getting smarter and more powerful all the time. Just they enable u.s.. They add together to our creativity.

Chess-playing machines now dominate, right? Afterwards all, the all-time machines tin can shell the best human players, right? Well, true, simply non every bit merely every bit you might call up. The best chess team in the world (notation the word "team") is composed of people and computers. The best mixed team can beat the best human or the best computer. And guess what? The best team does not have to have the best players or the best computers in it: it but has to take the best collaborators.

Human players accept gotten much stronger by using computers, and when they can use them in a match, they can shell unaided humans and unaided computers.

I'm a fan of this argument. After all, in my book, Things that make us smart, I argued that is is precisely things -- artifacts -- human built tools and machines -- that make us, the combination of us and our artifacts, smart. The unaided mind is pretty limited. Add writing and pow: we create mathematics, fine art, music, books. And machines that make us even smarter.

Self-driving cars? Bring them on: I accept amend things to do with my mind than stare upward the rear ends of the cars in front of me on the crowded streets.

Are there downsides? Yeah. The Luddites, for case, were not against technology: they were fearful of losing their jobs to technology. Their fears were correct. Many will be disadvantaged by new developments. Many will lose jobs and be unable to go new ones, considering the new skills required will be so different from the erstwhile ones that unproblematic retraining wil not do. Transitions are very painful Our social club does a bad chore of aiding people during transition periods. This is an important issue nosotros must confront, but information technology is not helped by overdone tales of gloom and despair: go out those to the science fiction writers.

Merely we will not reach the deadly disuse of humankind predicted past some. Instead, we will be able to better our skills, our creativity, and our accomplishments.

Thompson ends his book by reflecting upon IBM's success with powerful computers: Chess, jeopardy, and now being deployed for numerous domains (manufacturing, medicine, scientific discipline).

"How should you respond when you get powerful new tools for finding Answers?" asks Thompson.

"Think of harder questions," he responds.

Smarter Than You Think: on Amazon.com