Tools for the mind

In the book The Shallows, the author talks about how the tools we use become mental and physical prosthetics. I'd add that some of our digital tools have become social prosthetics, but more on that another day.

As we come to rely on these tools, they change how we see and interact with our environment. The tools I have become most in have been the tools we use for thought and intellectual inquiry. Apple famously sold us on the promise that the computer was the bicycle for the mind.

I've experimented with lots of tools that make a similar promise. Evernote promised to help remember everything. Obsidian promises to be my second brain forever.

But I have to wonder whether the ways in which these tools remove friction really serve our best interest when it comes to our intellectual life. Evernote's web clipper for instance made it easy to save content online. But what I soon realised, is that this results in a collection of notes that I never had the time to thoroughly engage with. The same was true of many other bookmarking and read-later apps.

I think we have to evaluate each of these tools and consider whether the benefits they propose don't come with unintended side effects. While Evernote allowed me to save and 'remember' everything, It didn't give me the depth and understanding I might have had if I'd spent time actually engaging with this content.

I try to make a habit of experimenting with these tools, but I'm careful to be sure they really offer a net positive.