The chapters we read in this book essentially discuss what people use in order to make themselves smarter. The beginning chapters discussed how technology can make us smarter but also warns us that it can make us dumber as well. Many concepts such as experiential cognition (which leads to a state in which we perceive and react to events around us effortlessly), reflexive cognition (that of decision making), accretion (the accumulation of facts), tuning (practice that leads to expert behavior), and restructuring (where new conceptual skills are acquired) are discussed in these early chapters. In the later chapters the author gets more specific about what makes us smart. He explains how external aids and cognitive artifacts can play a huge part in human intelligence.
Discussion:
The first few chapters that I read really made me think I would not enjoy this book. The author stated that he was an optimist and thought technology was overall good, but then proceeded to discuss how bad it was. The later chapters, however, were very informative and had a lot of great information. The examples and thoroughness of his explanations made me rethink my initial impression of this book.
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