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Some of the test subjects were given cards that had both words printed in full, like this: Hot: ColdOthers used cards that showed only the first letter of the second word, like this: Hot: CThe people who used the cards with the missing letters performed much better in a subsequent test measuring how well they remembered the word pairs. Simply forcing their minds to fill in a blank, to act rather than observe, led to stronger retention of information.Nicholas Carr
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When an inscrutable technology becomes an invisible technology, we would be wise to be concerned. At that point, the technology's assumptions and intentions have infiltrated our own desires and actions. We no longer know whether the software is aiding s or controlling us. We're behind the wheel, but we can't be sure who's driving.Nicholas Carr
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As a society, we've become suspicious of such acts. Out of ignorance or laziness or timidity, we've turned the Luddites into caricatures, emblems of backwardness. We assume that anyone who rejects a new tool in favor of an older one is guilty of nostalgia, of making choices sentimentally rather than rationally. But the real sentimental fallacy is the assumption that the new thing is always better suited to our purposes and intentions than the old thing. That's the view of a child, naive and pliable. What makes one tool superior to another has nothing to do with how new it is. What matters is how it enlarges us or diminishes us, how it shapes our experience of nature and culture and one another. To cede choices about the texture of our daily lives to a grand abstraction called progress is folly.Nicholas Carr