Even when we're in the midst of doing something, we don't seem able to judge its psychic consequences accurately
(15) We're terrible at anticipating which activities will satisfy us and which will leave us disconnected
(16) A job imposes a structure on our time that we lose when we're left to our own devices
(During leisure time): Disengaged from any outward focus, our attention turns inward. And we end up locked in what Emerson called the jail of self-consciousness
(57) Mental models = dedicated assemblies of neurons that allows one to recognize patterns in his surroundings
Allows you to react intuitively without getting bogged down in conscious analysis
Develop abilities, such as flying on "autopilot", through hard work
(72) By isolating us from negative feedback, automation makes it harder for us to stay alert and engaged. We tune out even more
Generation effect = people remember words much better when they actively call them to mind -- when they generate them -- than when they read them from a page
The generation effect requires precisely the kind of struggle that automation seeks to alleviate
(74) When we carry out a task or a job on our own, we seem to use different mental processes than when we rely on the aid of a computer
(79) Just knowing that information will be available in a database appears to reduce the likelihood that our brains will make the effort required to form memories
To truly know something, you have to weave it into your neural circuitry, and then you have to repeatedly retrieve it from memory and put it to fresh use
Skill-building process = talent comes to be exercised without conscious thought
Without lots of practice, lots of repetition and rehearsal of a skill in different circumstances, you and your brain will never get really good at anything, at least not anything complicated
(85) When automation distances us from our work, when it gets between us and the world, it erases the artistry from our lives
(113) "What if the cost of machines that think is people who don't?"
(119) [On AI] The goal is no longer to replicate the process of human thought…but rather to replicate the results
(124) Oakeshott's words provide us with a perfect description of computer intelligence: eminently practical and productive and entirely lacking in curiosity, imagination, and worldliness
(133) "To never confront the possibility of getting lost is to live in a state of perpetual dislocation"
If you never have to worry about not knowing where you are, then you never have to know where you are
It is also to live in a state of dependency, a ward of your phone and its apps
(148) Martin Heidegger: The deepest form of understanding available to us "is not mere perceptual cognition, but, rather, a handling, using, and taking care of things, which has its own kind of 'knowledge'"
"Nothing about human experience remains untouched by human embodiment" -Shaun Gallagher
(151) Great ironies of our time:
Even as scientists discover more about the essential roles that physical action and sensory perception play in the development of our thoughts, memories, and skills, we're spending less time acting in the world and more time living and working through the abstract medium of the computer screen
We're disembodying ourselves, imposing sensory constraints on our existence
With the general-purpose computer, we've managed, perversely enough, to devise a tool that steals from us the bodily joy of working with tools
(157) [On humans being bad at monitoring automated systems] "The assumption that the human being will be the weakest link in the system becomes self-fulfilling"
(160) Enlightenment thinkers vs industrial revolution
Enlightenment thinkers viewed new technologies as "instruments for transforming society"
Late industrial revolution = new tech revered as good in itself (instead of means to a greater good)
(161) As society becomes ever more computerized, the programmer becomes its unacknowledged legislator
(182) Removing the friction from social attachments doesn't strengthen them; it weakens them
More like attachments between consumers and products -- easily formed and easily broken
Google/Facebook demean and diminish qualities of character once seen as essential to a full and vigorous life: ingenuity, curiosity, independence, perseverance, daring
(193) First shot taken freely by a robot = shot heard round the world
Will change war and society forever
Eventually software takes on a "compelling urgency"
It becomes "the very stuff out of which man builds his world"
(198) If tech unemployment worsens, it'll be result of our new "subterranean infrastructure of automation"
The robots/applications are the visible flora of automation's deep, extensive, and implacably invasive root system
Men and institutions are developing characteristics that suit them to characteristics of prevailing technology
Automation's spread is making our lives more programmatic
Fewer opportunities to demonstrate resourcefulness, ingenuity, and self-reliance (that were once considered the mainstay of character)
(200) We've never carried on our person a tool that so insistently captivates our senses and divides our attention
By connecting us to a symbolic elsewhere, the smartphone exiles us from the here and now
We lose the power of presence
Perception requires both your eyes and your mind
(205) Google filters out serendipity in favor of insularity
It douses the infectious messiness of a city with an algorithmic antiseptic
Facebook encourages its members to think of their public image as indistinguishable from their identity
The self is rarely fixed. It has a protean quality
It emerges through personal exploration, and it shifts with circumstances
That's especially true in youth, when a person's self-conception is fluid, subject to testing, experimentation and revision
Locked into identity early = foreclose opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment
(207) We allow and sometimes encourage people to engage in dangerous hobbies, sports, and other pursuits
A full life, we know, is not perfectly insulated
We're surrounded by "concealed electronic complexity"
If we don't understand the commercial, political, intellectual, and ethical motivations of the people writing our software, we open ourselves to manipulation
(213) [On Frost] "Here we see how a poet's scrutiny of the world can be more subtle and discerning that a scientist's
(While 'mowing) He's not seeking some greater truth beyond the work. The work is the truth
Frost is getting at the "centrality of action to both living and knowing"
Only through work that brings us into the world do we approach a true understanding of existence
It’s not an understanding that can be put into words
It can't be made explicit; it's nothing more than a whisper
Labor = form of contemplation, a way of seeing the world face-to-face rather than through glass
Action un-mediates perception, gets us close to the thing itself
The antithesis of transcendence, work puts us in our place
(214) When we embark on a task, we usually have a practical goal in sight we're looking forward to
But it's through the work itself that we come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our situation
The mowing, not the hay, is what matters most
(216) Whenever we gain a new talent, we not only change our bodily capacities, we change the world
With every skill we master, the world reshapes itself to reveal greater possibilities
Technology…also alters our perception of the world and what the world signifies to us
(220) When we enter the glass cage, we're required to shed much of our body
That doesn't free us, it emaciates us
The world in turn is made less meaningful
The result is "existential impoverishment"; the self can only thrive/grow when it encounters and overcomes "resistance from surroundings"
Ours may be a time of material comfort and technological wonder, but it's also a time of aimlessness and gloom
Antidepressants/ADHD meds "provide a way to rein in our vital, animal sensorium, to shrink our being to a size that better suits our constricted environs"
(225) As we become dependent on our technological slaves, we turn into slaves ourselves
(231) Real sentimental fallacy = assuming new thing is always better suited to our purposes/intentions than the old thing
Superiority has nothing to do with newness
What matters = how it enlarges/diminishes us, how it shapes our experience of nature and culture and one another
To cede choices about the texture of our daily lives to a grand abstraction called progress is folly
To resist invention is not to reject invention
It's to humble invention, to bring progress back down to earth
(232) If the source of our vitality is, as Emerson taught us, the "active soul", then our highest obligation is to resist any force, whether institutional or commercial or technological, that would enfeeble or enervate the soul
Every time we collide with the real, we deepen our understanding of the world and become more fully a part of it
It's the work -- the means -- that make us who we are
Automation severs ends from means
Does our essence still lie in what we know, or are we now content to be defined by what we want?