Figure It Out - Stephen P. Anderson

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this person, place, or tool concept is how we understand something that is neither person, place, nor tool. In his article “The Post-Mac Interface,” designer Adam Baker comments: “Metaphors in user interface are like sets in theatre. They convince us to believe that the thing we’re looking at is like something else.”4 But software is bits and bytes that can be anything. Indeed, while the desktop metaphor was a big leap forward and useful to make personal computers accessible to a generation—linking the unknown to what is already known—we’re now stuck trying to move beyond a metaphor that holds us back, often in subtle or invisible ways. Consider how difficult it’s been for most people to switch from a folder-based system to a more robust tagging and keyword-based system. It’s hard to set aside one frame and view something in a wholly different way.

      Or consider the underlying conceptual shift embedded into something like Google Docs. Behind the document editor as a “writing tool,” is a more fundamental shift to writing as a shared, collaborative activity (technology as platform). While most of us have rationally made this transition, consider how often we’re still caught off guard when we see other people—in real time— editing a document that we’re also working on. This shift from solitary tools to a shared collaborative activity is a fundamental one that we’re seeing across multiple domains. But these shifts take a long time before they feel natural. What more could we do if we didn’t have to bridge these concepts from one generation to the next, or one major invention to the next?

      Okay, maybe you’re thinking “Software labels. Robot sounds. Desktop metaphors. Our concepts for approaching technology aren’t that huge of a deal, right?” Let’s make this personal. Let’s extend this out to a critical conversation that is happening right now and will have serious legal implications for decades to come.

      Technology Framing and Human Rights

      At the level of public policy, our choice of frame can affect legislation dictating our rights as citizens. If we view our mobile phone as a butler who relays messages for us, then intercepting messages is akin to surveillance, and we have legal precedents for this. We can treat this technology like we do wiretapping. But what if, as human rights activist Aral Balkan suggests, our mobile devices are extensions of ourselves? In a rather impassioned plea, Balkan questions the nature of our relationship with technology (while also presenting the same questions we posed in Chapter 2 about Where does thinking happen?).

      What if, when I write down a thought on my phone to remember it later, what I am actually doing is extending my mind, and thereby extending myself using the phone.

      Today, we are all cyborgs. This is not to say that we implant ourselves with technology, but that we extend our biological capabilities using technology. We are shared beings; with parts of ourselves spread across and augmented by our everyday things.

      Perhaps it is time to extend the boundaries of the self to include the technologies by which we extend our selves.

      My iPhone is not like a safe (that I can be ordered to open) any more than my brain is like a safe.5

      Our phones as extensions of ourselves? This may sound a bit far-fetched, but is it really? How quickly does the conversation change if our mobile devices move from our hands and wrists to permanent, updatable implants in the brain? We already see technology heading in this direction. If we view these devices as intimate extensions of ourselves and our mind, then the conversation shifts into radically different places. Do we want a society where corporations and city-states have legal rights to peer into our minds and access our most intimate thoughts?

      Notice how simply shifting or substituting the underlying conceptual metaphor, from that of a tool to that of personal augmentation, allows our own thinking to change: we see things differently. That is the point of this short, dystopian journey: To understand how associations shape understanding, and how we can be intentional with our use—or avoidance—of such associations.

      Associations Among Concepts Is Thinking

      In truth, the message of this section is a simple one: Associations among concepts is thinking. That’s it. We could stop here, ending with some practical takeaways. However, this simple message manifests in so many different ways that it’s worthwhile to hold up example after example, until the profundity of this message sinks in. Indeed, it took me (Stephen) some years, bouncing between a number of communities—linguistics, advertising, behavioral economics, speechwriting, semiotics, storytelling, and more—before this simple truth became so clear. Associations among concepts is thinking. This is the universal common denominator that sits quietly behind so many of the conclusions reached by these different communities. As with the previous technology example, it’s how we frame something, yes. But it’s also everything else that might trigger a concept: a sight, a smell, sounds. Specific word choices. Invoking a familiar narrative. Using an aggressive shape. Using an illustrative picture. All these things trigger concepts, that in turn shape our understanding. Consider how (and for what purpose) the following professions try to shape our thoughts and beliefs:

      • Politicians craft the words they use and the clothes they wear, to influence voters.

      • Retailers spend billions on packaging and retail build-outs to increase sales.

      • Marketers use product placement in movies and celebrity endorsements to alter how people think of products.

      • Magicians lead us to believe the unbelievable (and delight us in the process) by exploiting our cognitive weaknesses.

      • The hospitality industry influences our emotions through scents, lighting, space planning, decor, and delighters; a good hotel is more than just about a place to sleep.

      • Photographers, through photo cropping, depth of field, blurs, composition, and other photographic details, shape our experience of their story.

      • Graphic designers choose typefaces, shapes, and colors to create a desired feeling.

      All of the conclusions we reach, the beliefs we form, the perceptions we believe to be reality, what someone comes to believe is truth, all of this is based on a whole constellation of sensory inputs.

      To really understand what is going on here, and what is common to all of the diverse examples cited, we need to turn our attention to the brain; this is not to exalt a “brainbound” model of reasoning (we don’t take that stance), but to understand the role that the brain plays in understanding. We can go on saying things like “Associations among concepts is thinking” and even offer tips like “Be careful with the words you choose” or “Consider the frame you’re trying to evoke,” but understanding why this is the case—neurologically—is the foundation for all that follows.

      The Brain as a Perceptual Organ

      Essentially, the brain is an associative pattern-matching organ, whose job is to predict patterns like those we’ve previously encountered. These predictions—what we think of as thought—are based on existing concepts, each formed through prior associations. Throughout our lives, we become attuned to perceptual information in the ambient environment and the accompanying possibilities for action. This perceptual information comes to us through various sensations—smells, sights, sounds, increased blood flow, and so on—all of which are transformed into electrical and chemical signals in the brain, that match (or don’t match) with our existing concepts. We build concepts upon concepts, starting from the most basic ability to recognize faces within days of being born to the ability to exclaim “a virus wiped out my PC”—a phrase that would be meaningless to someone who didn’t grow up with the modern social constructs that make this phrase meaningful.

      What we think at any given moment is a construction based on a lifetime of personal, social, bodily, and environmental experiences.

      For an overly simplistic analogy of what all this looks like (but sufficient for our purposes),

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