Welcome back. Have your 2018 predictions and resolutions failed yet? No? Well, give it a few more weeks. Let's talk about why that is inevitable and what to do about it when it happens. It has to do with falling off bicycles. Steve Jobs famously called the computer a bicycle for the brain. Have you ever wondered why a bicycle in particular? The answer is actually quite simple if you stop to think for a moment. The really tight interaction loop enabled by computers, capable of operating faster than the conscious executive decision-making rates of your pre-frontal cortex, allows you to literally hack your own attention and put your mind in a state of leveraged flow in relation to a specific activity. As we'll see, this is really close to riding a bicycle. The analogy works at a really detailed level. The oldest example of this loop is the REPL: read-eval-print loop, which refers to programming interactively using a shell interface. Once you get comfortable, you can literally program faster than you can make conscious decisions. Same with writing in a good word-processing interface, drawing on a good tablet, designing in a good CAD program, or researching a subject on Google. The interface, with all its frictions and latencies, becomes invisible. To your prefrontal cortex, the interface feels like another part of the brain rather than an external artifact. No pre-computing interface could disappear as completely into the brain
How To Ride Your Brain Bicycle
How To Ride Your Brain Bicycle
How To Ride Your Brain Bicycle
Welcome back. Have your 2018 predictions and resolutions failed yet? No? Well, give it a few more weeks. Let's talk about why that is inevitable and what to do about it when it happens. It has to do with falling off bicycles. Steve Jobs famously called the computer a bicycle for the brain. Have you ever wondered why a bicycle in particular? The answer is actually quite simple if you stop to think for a moment. The really tight interaction loop enabled by computers, capable of operating faster than the conscious executive decision-making rates of your pre-frontal cortex, allows you to literally hack your own attention and put your mind in a state of leveraged flow in relation to a specific activity. As we'll see, this is really close to riding a bicycle. The analogy works at a really detailed level. The oldest example of this loop is the REPL: read-eval-print loop, which refers to programming interactively using a shell interface. Once you get comfortable, you can literally program faster than you can make conscious decisions. Same with writing in a good word-processing interface, drawing on a good tablet, designing in a good CAD program, or researching a subject on Google. The interface, with all its frictions and latencies, becomes invisible. To your prefrontal cortex, the interface feels like another part of the brain rather than an external artifact. No pre-computing interface could disappear as completely into the brain