Things That Make Us Smart
by Donald A. Norman · first published 1993
9mentions
4recommended by
6HN commenters
2010–2026first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
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
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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.
on “Is the Internet an extension of human memory?” ↗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.
on “IA or AI?” ↗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…
on “Why is hi-tech Japan using cassette tapes and faxes? (2015)” ↗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…
on “When Objects Become Extensions of You” ↗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)
on “Usability” ↗Donald Norman in "Things That Make Us Smart" points out distinguishing between education and entertainment is not impossible but difficult. Artworks are performance outputs like proofs or designs. Then there are material sciences of their realizations…
on “On Unread Books” ↗…an article in The Atlantic (?) about an autistic child's relationship with Siri, written by the mother. Fascinating stuff. Like (sci-fi book) Diamond Age made real. I intend to revisit Donald Norman's Things that Make Us Smart [1993] https://archive.org/details/thingsthatmakeus00norm_0 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16868.Things_That_Make_U... Norman hugely influenced my own worldview, way back when I fancied myself an…
on “Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy” ↗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.
on “Karpathy: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks” ↗"The power of the unaided mind is greatly exaggerated. It is 'things' that make us smart, the cognitive artifacts that allow human beings to overcome the limitations of human memory and conscious reasoning." - Donald A. Norman, Things That Make Us Smart https://jnd.org/things_that_make_us_smart_forbes_article/
on “I’m not really a good web developer, I'm just good at Googling things” ↗