# How Can We Develop Transformative Tools for Thought? **Covers**:: **Source**:: [How Can We Develop Transformative Tools for Thought?](https://numinous.productions/ttft/) **Creator**:: [[numinous.productions]] # Highlights ##### ^306125209 highlight_tags:: [[technology]] I think this feeling comes more from the our knowledge of how far technology can take us, and less from it being less transformative than older systems. ###### ^306125209q it’s difficult not to be disappointed, to feel that computers have not yet been nearly as transformative as far older tools for thought, such as language and writing. ^306125209 ##### ^306125210 ###### ^306125210q a medium creates a powerful immersive context, a context in which the user can have new kinds of thought, thoughts that were formerly impossible for them ^306125210 ##### ^306125211 ###### ^306125211q the term “tools for thought” has been widely used since Iverson’s 1950s and 1960s work An account may be found in Iverson’s Turing Award lecture, Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979). Incidentally, even Iverson is really describing a medium for thought, the APL programming language, not a narrow tool. ^306125211 ##### ^306125212 ###### ^306125212q there’s an inherent inadequacy in writing about tools for thought. To the extent that such a tool succeeds, it expands your thinking beyond what can be achieved using existing tools, including writing. The more transformative the tool, the larger the gap that is opened. Conversely, the larger the gap, the more difficult the new tool is to evoke in writing. But what writing can do, and the reason we wrote this essay, is act as a bootstrap. It’s a way of identifying points of leverage that may help develop new tools for thought. ^306125212 ##### ^306125213 highlight_tags:: [[mnemonic medium]] ###### ^306125213q Aspirationally, the mnemonic medium makes it almost effortless for users to remember what they read. ^306125213 ##### ^306125214 highlight_tags:: [[learning]] This would be vital in making learning as easy as thinking ###### ^306125214q Is it possible to design a new medium which much more actively supports memorization? That is, the medium would build in (and, ideally, make almost effortless) the key steps involved in memory ^306125214