The only reason we don't notice how absolutely interwoven our thinking processes have become with older technologies - pencils, paper, electric light, penicillin, fire - is that they're old, so we've ceased to notice their effects.
Interpretation
We often overlook the impact of older technologies on our thinking processes because they have become a routine part of our lives.
Clive Thompson highlights how older technologies, such as pencils and light, have so deeply integrated into our daily thought processes that their influence is often taken for granted. This invisibility can lead us to forget the foundational role these tools play in shaping our creativity and cognition, emphasizing the significance of recognizing and appreciating the tools that enhance our intellectual experiences.
In practice
In a presentation on the evolution of communication, this quote can emphasize how technology influences our thoughts.
EMACS could not have been reached by a process of careful design, because such processes arrive only at goals which are visible at the outset, and whose desirability is established on the bottom line at the outset. Neither I nor anyone else visualized an extensible editor until I had made one, nor appreciated its value until he had experienced it. EMACS exists because I felt free to make individually useful small improvements on a path whose end was not in sight.
New technologies, however remarkable they might seem, are fundamentally just tools made by people for people.
I understood the importance in principle of public key cryptography but it's all moved much faster than I expected. I did not expect it to be a mainstay of advanced communications technology
From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it.
The strength of the computer lies in its being a logic machine. It does precisely what it is programed to do. This makes it fast and precise. It also makes it a total moron; for logic is essentially stupid.
The one thing perhaps that technology hasn't always given us is a sense of how to make the wisest use of technology.
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