Clive Thompson
Clive Thompson
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Transactive memory works best when you have a sense of how your partners' minds work - where they're strong, where they're weak, where their biases lie. I can judge that for people close to me. But it's harder with digital tools, particularly search engines.
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There is something about the ability to externalize our thoughts and compare them with other people in a public way that is really transformative for the average person.
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Novelists in particular love to rhapsodize about the glory of the solitary mind; this is natural, because their job requires them to sit in a room by themselves for years on end. But for most of the rest of us, we think and remember socially.
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The things kids can do on screens can be really delightful - if they are age appropriate. But no, they shouldn't spend all their time on a screen; they should split up their time doing multiple, different things.
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Software is now so complex - requiring so many gazillions of tiny files all over your computer - that most consumers don't want to bother to know what's really going on.
america
America has always had tinkerers, including just about any teenager who ever hot-rodded a Camaro.
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Why are online games so addictive? It's mostly the narcotic appeal of 'leveling.'
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Railing at scientists for massaging tree-ring statistics won't stop the globe from warming if the globe is actually, you know, warming.
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Insurance firms have always carefully studied real-world data to figure out what, precisely, constitutes a risky activity.
people
We're dumber and less cognitively nimble if we're not around other people - and, now, other machines.
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Personally, I'd love to see more social media firms develop business models that aren't reliant on advertising. If you're a social media firm selling ads, your goal is to get people to interrupt what they're doing all day long so they come and stare at your service as much as possible.
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The people who tend to get the most out of being social thinkers are the people who themselves are helpful. They're always talking or answering people's questions or engaging in productive conversations. They're not being trolls. They're tamping down other people that are being trolls.
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When you're an expert in a subject, you can retain new factoids on your favorite topic easily. This only works for the subjects you're truly passionate about, though. Baseball fans can reel off stats for their favorite players, then space out on their own birthday.
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We use paper documents to store knowledge so we can consult and reconsult it, giving us a type of recall impossible with our unaided minds; we use pencils to scratch down material so we can manipulate it in a fashion impossible in our unaided minds.