More than ever, embracing your humanity is the way forward. Innovation makes people panic. Every so often there’s a panic about how the computers are making us look bad. I first experienced this as a kid when pocket calculators came out and maths teachers everywhere spent several years trying to stop us from using them. But there had already been many previous rounds of this tech-induced disorientation. When telephones went mainstream, the morse code operators were probably saying, “Well the voice is all very well but it can hardly match the speed and precision of dots and dashes, so my job is clea... writingslowly.com

@writingslowly Truly enjoyed this. I really hope more people look towards something other than personal hubris to define what we are actually trying to achieve with these new tools.

@vazquez I’m on the ‘useful tool’ side of the debate, if only because I still haven’t forgiven the maths teachers for taking my pocket calculator from me at test time.

@gregmoore this is very interesting. Puts a new spin on the category ‘power tools’. Yes, the purpose of a tool is to help you help someone.

@SamHawken Yes, the panic is silly. I notice that though computers have been able to beat humans at chess, that’s not the end game. Now there’s a whole new generation of chess fanatics, strongly enabled by online chess.