(You can be) Smarter Than You Think

In my class on IT Ethics and the Law at Immaculata, one of the lectures is about the effects of technology on society and on ourselves as, well, humans. Sample topics include Nicholas Carr’s view that Google and the web are making us stupid; our difficulties in focusing, uni-tasking and reading; the tyranny of mob behavior on the web and Cybernetic Totalism; the hidden web filters identified by Eli Pariser that keep us locked into our own narrow opinion bubbles – all these downside effects and more. I must admit, this lecture has become increasingly grim over the years, as I have added more and more examples as they have come across my radar screen.

Well, I’m happy to report that I’ve now been able to temper the dark side with some positive counter balance, after having recently read a remarkable book called Smarter Than You Think. Written by Clive Thompson, a technology writer who contributes to the NY Times, Wired, Fast Company and NPR, this book is unashamedly positive in its viewpoint that technology is changing our lives not for the worse, but for the better. It’s changed my outlook too and I recommend it highly.

Thompson starts out reminding us how every technological shift has changed the paradigm before, from the written word to the printing press to mass communications to computers. What we’re going through is not new; we’ve survived it before, with both good and bad effects and we’ll do so again. The march of progress shows that the cumulative effects are likely to be more good than bad.

An interesting case in point is that of the written word and Socrates. Socrates, who expounded the oral tradition, despised books, because he said we’d stop memorizing our knowledge, and instead store our knowledge elsewhere and just look it up – a net effect that he said would leave us diminished and, well, stupider. Yet, we all know, that’s not what happened. The opposite happened; preserving knowledge outside our brains made us smarter, not dumber. Socrates was wrong, and the paradigm shift was vastly to the good. Similar effects can be observed with virtually all other technological shifts. We become different yes, but on the whole, better off.

Thompson describes many trends in the human-computer linkage and sees the positive in each one. Each chapter explores a different trend. ‘Pubic Thinking’ refers to the wisdom of crowds – the measurable ways that groups of people can think smarter than any individual alone, and how our networked media like the web has been facilitating this in ways that our often surprising. ‘Ambient Awareness’ talks about how we sense the world around us using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, in ways that increase human sensitivity and empathy with others.

I was very impressed by Thompson’s take on what he calls ‘The New Literacies.’ This refers to the web’s ability to record our thoughts in so many ways that didn’t exist in prior generations, from writing restaurant reviews, to musing on the meaning of the universe (and this blog included). The opportunities for self-expression that are open to us today would be staggering to our grandparents. My father, who died young 45 years ago, never wrote a restaurant, movie or book review, never publicly expressed himself on the issues of the day, or passed on in permanent form his opinions on the world, his life, his profession or his passions. I have, and so can my son and so can you. Though we are probably not in awe of this opportunity, perhaps we should be.

One of my favorite stories in the book is in the chapter ‘Rise of the Centaurs.’ Because I am an avid chess player – and had my first chess playing computer, an incredibly cheap and easy-to-beat toy from Radio Shack waaay back in the day – I have always been fascinated by the intersection of human and computer intelligence in the game of chess. We all know that a big milestone in computer intelligence was reached in 1997, when the world champion, Gary Kasparov, was beaten (pretty decisively) by a powerful IBM super computer specially built for the task called Deep Blue. The story might have ended there, but it didn’t. Kasparov had the idea that instead of man OR machine, the most powerful chess player might be man AND machine: a centaur (his term) in which a good player was assisted by a good computer. 

And that’s just what happened. Astonishingly, two average chess players (and by average I mean these guys had ratings around 1600, similar to mine – this is AVERAGE) used five off the shelf computer programs running on three off the shelf 2005-vintage desktop computers and were able to – you guessed it – beat a super computer (one called Hydra, that was even more powerful than Deep Blue). What gave this human-computer team the winning edge? The two men, Steve Cramton and Zachary Stephen, both from New England, were not expert chess players: they were experts at collaborating with their computers. The conclusion: human and computer collaboration, done right, was more powerful than either one alone. This is strong stuff if you think about it, and has application in every domain you can think of, from science and medicine to the arts and beyond.

I have been greatly encouraged by Thompsons’s book, which contains many more fascinating and sometimes brilliant insights than I am able to mention in this blog. The dark side of computing has not gone away, but there is also much to be hopeful about and we should all be thinking about – and working towards – positive outcomes of how computers change our lives. You should read Smarter Than You Think.