Clive Thompson Quotes
-
Tip-of-the-tongue syndrome is when people almost remember something but need a computer, or someone else, to help them find it. The problem is, our brains have always been terrible at remembering details. They were like that way before the Internet came along.
-
The amount of writing that people do online is astonishing, and historically unprecedented.
-
Insurance firms have always carefully studied real-world data to figure out what, precisely, constitutes a risky activity.
-
Railing at scientists for massaging tree-ring statistics won't stop the globe from warming if the globe is actually, you know, warming.
-
We're dumber and less cognitively nimble if we're not around other people - and, now, other machines.
-
Truly huge artistic collaboration on the Internet seems to work only if the gang has a well-defined objective.
-
The main message of 'Smarter Than You Think' is an attempt to look at the productively new and interesting ways that we have begun to learn about the world, to think about what we found, and to mull it over and argue about it with other people as we use technology.
-
The Internet lets thousands of total strangers collaborate to produce a truly hivelike result.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.