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February 03, 2005
Tool for Thought: A Thinking Partner
Steven Johnson, author of Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software and Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, recently wrote an essay for the New York Times called Tool for Thought. He says:
[This tool] "... can create almost lyrical connections between ideas. I'm now working on a project that involves the history of the London sewers. The other day I ran a search that included the word ''sewage'' several times. Because the software knows the word ''waste'' is often used alongside ''sewage'' it directed me to a quote that explained the way bones evolved in vertebrate bodies: by repurposing the calcium waste products created by the metabolism of cells.That might seem like an errant result, but it sent me off on a long and fruitful tangent into the way complex systems -- whether cities or bodies -- find productive uses for the waste they create. It's still early, but I may well get an entire chapter out of that little spark of an idea.
Now, strictly speaking, who is responsible for that initial idea? Was it me or the software? It sounds like a facetious question, but I mean it seriously. Obviously, the computer wasn't conscious of the idea taking shape, and I supplied the conceptual glue that linked the London sewers to cell metabolism. But I'm not at all confident I would have made the initial connection without the help of the software. The idea was a true collaboration, two very different kinds of intelligence playing off each other, one carbon-based, the other silicon.
Steven's description of the genesis of a new chapter as the result of a seemingly loose connection between disparate ideas reminds me of how Mary and I "think" together. At the end of an hour or two together, we are often surprised at the many tacks we have taken, the many tangents we have followed, and the many connections we have made. Sometimes we have something coherent and tangible to show for our thinking together; sometimes not. In all cases, it is a true collaboration, two very different kinds of intelligence playing off each other, both carbon-based.
Posted by Kerry at February 3, 2005 06:44 PM