Name: Things That Make Us Smart
ISBN: 9780201626957

Things That Make Us Smart

Insightful and whimsical, profoundly intelligent and easily accessible, Don Norman has been exploring the design of our world for decades, exploring this complex relationship between humans and machines. In this seminal work, fully revised and updated, Norman gives us the first steps towards demanding a person-centered redesign of the machines we use every day. Humans have always worked with objects to extend our cognitive powers, from counting on our fingers to designing massive supercomputers. But advanced technology does more than merely assist with memory—the machines we create begin to shape how we think and, at times, even what we value. In THINGS THAT MAKE US SMART, Donald Norman explores the complex interaction between human thought and the technology it creates, arguing for the development of machines that fit our minds, rather than minds that must conform to the machine.

What Hacker News says

specialistNov 2020

re cyborgs

Yes, and... "Continuity of the Mind" sounds complimentary to, an update to, Norman's Things That Make Us Smart and McLuhan's Understanding Media.

https://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart-Attributes/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Media-Extensions-Marsha...

We geeks are truly well served by the seminal texts, the classics. I'd heard about cybernetics second hand. But I was already a cyborg, taking the modern world for granted. Reading the source blew my mind. Somehow the impact of progress were clearer to the observers present during the transition(s).

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specialistOct 2019

Good rant. I'm very sympathetic to your dis-ease.

As a kid, I read and embraced Postman's Technolopy and Norman's Psychology of Everyday Things, Things That Make Us Smart (for starters). Transmuted me from a technophile into a humanist. It's been downhill for me ever since.

"We are not the machines we use."

Elon Musk repeated something very smart during his Joe Rogan interview: We're already cyborgs. Pen and paper are advanced technologies. No disrespect: we make the tools which in turn make us.

I really wish more geeks active today were better versed in the history of cybernetics, memetics, automation, technology.

"I talk to the person and the deal is done."

I think you're referring to trust.

A major, recurring mistake geeks make is the technophilic future perfect effort of replacing trust, esteem, relationships with protocols, while ignoring culture, social norms, and basic human nature.

Yet another distributed social media content publishing truthiful moderation peer-to-peer payment scheme, now with better crypto.

Something like Robert's Rules of Order only works because the participants temporarily suspend disbelief and buy-in.

To use your phrasing, that's the bubble that worries me, technology without humanism, which keeps us geeks apart from the general populace, and has now manifested as blowback.

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hellbannerOct 2015

I highly recommend Things that Make Us Smart: http://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart-Attributes/dp/0... "Defending Human attributes int he age of the Machine".

Great read for anyone interested in IA or AI.

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billswiftJul 2011

I vaguely remember reading something on the Web years ago, but there are two books I know of that discuss this idea: Donald Norman's Things That Make Us Smart and Andy Clark's Natural-born Cyborgs.

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jonahJul 2010

Another vote for POET.

I'm currently reading another of his books - Things That Make us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine. Recommended. (http://www.jnd.org/books.html#40)

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specialistJan 2026

Yup.

My personal counterpoint is Norman's thesis in Things That Make Us Smart.

I've long tried, and mostly failed, to consider the tradeoffs, to be ever mindful that technologies are never neutral (winners & losers), per Postman's Technopoly.

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