 So our next panel is who and what will get to think the future and I'm delighted to be Talking about this with Ted Chang a science fiction writer a technical writer the author of stories of your life and others and the life cycle of software Objects his stories have been winners of the Locusts and Nebula Awards And he is distinguished today by being a science fiction writer who's not actually in the book So he still has some some some shred of independence To tell us what he really thinks so Ted I want to start by asking you I want to lean on this word think I'm really this is a subject that I become really interested in over the past year or so. I'm working on a book about algorithms as culture machines basically and the ways in which thinking might not be The same anymore, so how do you what do you think thinking is going to mean and do you see that changing in the near future? Well, okay, so there was this I thought a really fascinating anecdote that the science writer Stephen Johnson Mentioned once he was working on on a science book and he he has installed on his computer a piece of software which It the it caches all like sort of all the webpages and stuff that he has consulted for research and all sorts of his notes it organizes All information that he wants to use and this software also scans what he is typing as he types and then it throws up possibly relevant information from his personal research database and in in the course of Writing a chapter in the software threw up a piece of information which he thought was that was a really interesting Connection it made You know and then that gave rise to an entire chapter of his book Making this this this connection between what you know one thing that he had said and this other thing that the software had brought up and he He wondered who came up with the idea for that chapter Was it him or was it the software? Now you know that that example is you know, that's not that that piece of software It's not something that most of us are using right now, but I think you'll the fact that We are more and more sort of relying on computer devices as a lot like a lot of people call them secondary brains We are sort of doing a lot of cognitive outsourcing so in in various fashions our thinking is Partially being done by algorithms now and We know our creativity is not all happening within our heads now and You know at some point It you know it will probably become worthwhile asking What How much how much do we want to how much of our cognition do we want to seed to? Software and will there be? Will the companies who make that software have an interest in Getting a part of our cognition Will different companies you know offer sort of maybe different benefits or different styles of cognition and You know is that something that we will be that a choice that we will have to make in In the so when we choose the software we use I think we're already there. I mean This is but borrowing this from from one of my colleagues based you, but you know how many of you use Apple devices How many of you feel that this is in some way kind of a moral or aesthetic choice? Right that you sort of look down on people who don't use Apple devices, right? And the same could probably be said of many of the Android users in the room we and There there's already a kind of Cognitive investment that we make you know at a certain point you have years of your personal history living in somebody's cloud And that goes beyond merely being a memory bank. It's also a cognitive bank in some way I want to come back to another thing you mentioned, which is this notion of creativity one of the We've always used tools from the each thing to You know flipping through your copy of the Aeneid in the Middle Ages To going to a library and looking at what books are on the shelf next to the thing you thought you were looking for We've always used serendipity a sort of structured serendipity to do research to have to do intellectual work and one of the most interesting things about Digital systems like the one that you were talking about from from Steven Johnson is that they also Manufacture serendipity in a way that is supposed to be helpful to you But all of these systems have their implicit biases and reasons for doing things right and so We might be using Twitter as another serendipity engine to try and find out what's happening in the world But Twitter isn't only interested in in showing us stuff that's happening in the world, right? They have these other agendas other as we were just talking about in the last panel People are trying to make money off this and we're not really the users of a lot of these systems We're the product we're the the the thing that's being sold to advertisers so as you think about Where we're heading do you I'd like to hear you reflect a little more on that that question of style Do you think that? Do you want to speculate on on what kinds of styles we might actually get to have? I mean is it going do are we are do we already have are we already starting to wear the grooves? Through the relationships we have now with our software tools Well, okay, so in terms of you know the what sort of serendipity we rely on I think that I think Google Auto complete is You know I think it has become something that a lot of people rely on you type in a word And then you see what's in the drop-down list and that will often influence What it what the next word you type is? and while You know It would be nice to think that you know that drop-down list is Determined on purely objective terms, you know, we have we have no guarantee that that is I mean There's no there's no real definition of what constitutes an objective, you know population of that drop-down list There's going to be an algorithm and different people, you know we'll offer different algorithms for how to populate that that auto complete list and That will shape the serendipity that you experience when you are doing research even something like This is this next example is not so much algorithmic, but again the fact that you know so many people rely on Wikipedia and you know Whatever the authors of that Wikipedia entry and whatever links they put in Those are probably shaping a lot of people's ways of thinking about topics and You know these are all things that we You know, we didn't voluntarily sign up for and initially we think these are incredibly welcome conveniences But you know, they are they are shaping Yeah, the serendipity that we experienced there They are in some way influencing our creativity and You know at the moment Google, I think you know really dominates search at least in the English language But you know, you mean you could you could easily imagine a situation where different search engines, you know Are you know major players and if they if they're auto complete lists are, you know, you know different in some way You know people might you know Choose their search engine because you know, I sort of like the auto complete suggestions that Bing is offering More than the ones that Google is offering. It just get me, you know. Yes. Yes And you know, so that is You know, it's it's a it's sort of an extension of targeted advertising and it's you know, it's an opportunity for a kind of you know Targeted You know cognitive bias I I'm fascinated by auto complete as a short digression I I teach a course at ASU called media literacies in composition and one assignment I have all the students do each year is to write a poem or a short story Using only phrases they get from auto complete And I'll I'll usually give them up like a seed that they can start with like, you know How do I or something like that and they can add on letters or words if they want to to kind of farm out, you know Get more stuff But it's it's fascinating and one of the reasons that it's it's so compelling is that you know I mean, I'm you know, I'm sure Google is manipulating this and you know trying to get you but but they're also This is this isn't a cognitive amplification of what thousands of people must have typed into their search bars at some point Or another to actually ask about and so that can be fascinating horrifying deeply sad Sometimes, you know, sometimes joyous when you see what those things are if you type in how do I you know, it's sort of Mind-blowing what comes up and so the the the the poetry the fiction that comes out the other end is often really Interesting because of that too, you know that idea of grooves, you know, these are really well-worn grooves people sitting there typing this stuff in But what is Really intriguing to me now beyond simply autocomplete is the whole sweet the old the whole apparatus of interaction and I think Google is the the elephant or maybe the the octopus in the room in this case in this context because they are now it is it is It is so easy to look something up on Google and now Google has of course in sort of ingested Wikipedia So Wikipedia entries will pop up if you've ever you probably noticed that if you're looking for something and Wikipedia happens to have an entry of it Google puts it right up near the top for you Often you don't even need to click through to Wikipedia, which I'm sure makes Wikipedia sad and You know, they've they've sort of absorbed this entire this entire knowledge infrastructure from Wikipedia and they have this this project called knowledge graph where they're they're basically going out and trying to ingest portions of the web they started with things like Wikipedia that had structured data and now they're Proceeding out into unstructured data and the the deeper wilds of the internet I feel like eventually they're gonna travel back in time and you know start surveying geocities with little spiders and getting all the all the all the old gifts but Where they are what they're really doing is is building this this map of ideas and stuff, you know of cognitive elements and What Because it's so easy and it's an almost impossible not to begin any intellectual question You have them that you're going to use a computer for it's almost impossible not to begin with Google now in some way shape or form Right at least again in English certainly in the US It's easy to forget all the stuff that Google doesn't know so that's one one thing to think about and the the seduction right the seduction of Perfect knowledge in the seduction of Wikipedia too, which is its own romantic notion of building the universal encyclopedia So that's one thing and then the other thing is is getting you know getting back to Sure, there are thousands of people typing this in but ultimately comes back to you And is this something that you end up typing in why is Google? Why does Google keep trying to complete my sentences and my thoughts for me, right? And this is some Google now Google now Google will tell you when to go to your next appointment I find it I find it deeply useful. I'm not trying to you know knock this. I think it's it's exciting and Something that you know, we need to think hard about at the same time But they're not just mapping outer space the universe of knowledge. They're also mapping interspace right? They're mapping each of us and there's this sort of interesting question of What point at what point do computers and algorithms actually know us better than we know ourselves? Because they can see things about us that we can't easily see they can they know Way better than us how long it takes us how exactly how long it takes us to get out of the house each morning or you know You know how long it takes us to eat lunch or how many typos we make every hour How efficient we are at 11 a.m. Versus 3 p.m. You know their algorithms that kind of gather all this information so What you know do you think do you think we're gonna be more surprised by Algorithms that map the outer space of knowledge or the inner space of knowledge well, I guess you know, I think that the I think that the The risk is that you know, we will not be aware of it mapping the inner space of knowledge. We Will not be conscious of the way that it is you know shaping our cognition, you know modifying our habits You know the The utility of Google for you know searching, you know, we're getting the information that is something that we are aware of You know, we're thinking this is great, but It is having an effect on us internally and you know, that is much much less obvious and I mean, I think this is this is something that In way is you know, it's a continuation of a Long trend of sort of cognitive technologies Socrates famously he criticized writing because He thought that you know, it only creates the The illusion of wisdom instead of you know, someone actually knowing something themselves They just read it somewhere and you know, they don't really know it To be fair Plato really put those words in his mouth when he wrote the book. Yes. He did he did And So, you know our Our reliance on Google and you know the internet in general in a sense You know, we are like all of us are you know trivia champs now But you know sort of meta trivia champs, right? We know how to find it. Yes. Yes. I mean We all share We all share a certain Cognitive resource now and It is Yeah, it in a lot of ways we all feel we all feel that like This is an incredibly powerful tool But you know Socrates or Plato, you know had a point about the fact that There it is taking something away from us, you know when people are deprived of the internet when you don't have your smartphone, you know A lot of people they feel less themselves So You know that is That is one of these sort of unanticipated side effects of this this this technology that we all love Yeah, I think that that notion of the the phone and in some ways also the these invisible things, you know What are whether it's your Twitter feed or or whatever? But there are these these cognitive prostheses that do somehow amplify you that are that are yourself And which leads to the interesting question of cognitive Proprioception cultural proprioception in the sense that you might have these These things have that have become internalized as part of your identity that only exist virtually And they can actually do other people virtually. You know, I think it does fundamentally change Who we are as humans and you know as a as a card carrying English professor, you know The humanities is changing right then how we read and write is fundamentally changing because of these tools And that means that how we construct ourselves as human beings and what we think that means is also changing And I think we're just at the beginning of that I'm gonna give you the last word I guess I don't I don't have I don't have a Should we Google it yeah, yeah somebody somebody out here in the audience will have figured it out for us on Twitter So yeah, I think who and what we'll get to think the future It's clearly gonna be a collaboration, right? I think that's the I think that's the stopping point As this was so thank you. All right, so You