RE: bycicle for MIND --- regular bycicles do NOT automate everything YOU still need to pedal YOU still need to navigate --- therefore a "bycicle for MIND" should NOT automate everything YOU still need to THINK

the explanation of why the bicycle is used in the analogy is relevant, it allows you to do the task more efficiently, it's not a replacement. I heard someone this week in a podcast explain the analogy wrong 😄

The problem is once we decide efficiency is what matters, there's no mental and philosophical guardrails to protect us from chasing chasing cars and trucks and aircraft carriers.

"must function completely without external dependencies other than food calories" eliminates aircraft carriers!

@Arvind Thyagarajan Would you have thought of adding this clause when cars were invented in the late 19th century?

ah! most probably not, because cars would have been invented in response to some valid current problem (let's say too many horses producing too much horseshit) and the ground level conversations and messaging would have been hard to resist -- it would have been plain to see that they were noisy, expensive, dangerous etc. but they solved an agreed upon problem and the promise of improvement ever looms -- so when I was told that they'd get way less noisy, i would probably have said, "oh nice, that's a good idea, my musician friends have sensitive ears and they work in the next town so this would be super useful" instead of, "this whole thing is a bad idea, in the long run everyone will have one or even two, and burn fossil fuels and we need to keep tinkering for a better solution, so please abandon this engine and let's get back to the sketchbook"

A bicycle isn't just more efficient - its operating entirely by the power of the person. It has no external power source - that's the whole point. Is it ok to assume people know the full quote? The context is in comparison to other animals and how efficiently they move. A person isn't high on that list, but a person on a bicycle puts us on the top.

I was very much thinking of the original quote, yes. It seems to me that Steve Jobs would say yes a human in a car is more efficient of their internal energy than a human on a bike. He was just pitching the bike at a point in time when Apple computers couldn't yet strive to be cars. But now they can and they do, and they've never stopped to wonder if they should, and the economic system doesn't really incentivize thinking about that question. That's my interpretation, and I'm curious as well if others see anything in this clip that contradicts this interpretation. Where is the line for 'tools' between bicycles and cars? I wish he'd said something like @Arvind Thyagarajan above about dependencies and resilience. I'm extremely sympathetic to the way we moderns interpret "bicycle for the mind". 💯 to that, who cares what the guy in the video thinks.

I guess I just completely disagree. The literal context is a comparison to animals operating under their own power. The bicycle wasn't Steve's idea, it was the original researchers. Those researchers never would have included a car in the study because its a completely different category. Not to mention that if you look at the actual energy cost to move a car, its incredibly inefficient for value of moving a human being. It has to move an extra ton of metal in process.

Perhaps we'll never know. As evidence for my interpretation, see again the final sentences of the clip about how we are in the early stages of this tool, etc. I think he was absolutely treating gasoline as an externality, i.e. ignoring it. Going back to the original post, my point is that considerations of efficiency can lead one astray without mentioning the rules for computing efficiency, something this thread does very well since my first comment.

The metaphor he's using is specifically about extending the abilities of a human being to make them more capable. Not to replace them.

But a car doesn't replace the human. The human is still deciding where to go, just with more capability.

I'm sorry, but I feel like you keep missing the point completely. A bird can get put on a jet and fly very fast without flapping its wings too.

I think I get your point fine, and totally agree with it! I just don't think Steve Jobs got it.

And I completely disagree with you. I really think that this was deliberate. Steve was highly influenced by Alan Kay and Doug Englebart too. I think he was voicing the same ideas about augmenting human intellect. Not fully automating so that people stop thinking.

But cars never made humans stop thinking! I'll stop here, let others have a turn.

This is what the thread started from: a "bycicle for MIND" should NOT automate everything YOU still need to THINK

Which I totally agree with. My first comment was in response to Mariano's comment, which brought up efficiency. Which in turn brought to mind the Steve Jobs clip.

Thats fine. The naive interpretation of the quote might just focus on efficiency. I don't think that was the intent of Steve Jobs is what I'm saying. I was going back to the context of the quote to back that up. That's why I'm saying its a category error. If you take that quote and then say, "but what about cars", you would first have to even make that makes sense in the metaphor. A car does not operate under the power of the user. It is not an extension of them. It is a separate thing. Its more like comparing a person on foot to a person on a horse - a comparison they did not make. A car is like an automated horse.

I think the category is not the tool/object but the use/purpose: • a harness/rope/carabiner, a set of stairs, and a lift are in the same category for the purpose of "getting to a 10th floor office before 10AM" and it would appear silly to tell the inventor of the lift to cool their heels, instead of questioning the purpose if you're in a questioning mood -- of course a lift is great for this category, stairs are also great with some added longer term health benefits that accrue automatically but they're not accessible for everyone, while climbing equipment is ridiculous! • but if I'm standing at the bottom of our approach to El Cap, it's dawn, and I'm looking straight up the crack system of 1000s of feet of granite, "we should put a lift here, it would be so much more efficient" is revealed quite obviously to be wrong because the purpose is quite clearly in a different category? Do we fix our tools or our desires? My wife and I cannot get to our aging parents in India without aircraft. But I've never taken a flight from New York to Boston, likely never will... So, I will: 1. Take a car until I get well past Stockton or Modesto 2. Park in Mariposa & take a bicycle into Yosemite 3. Stash the bike and gear up for the climb the old fashioned way All the while making decisions to maximise purpose (fun, health, excitement, challenge, efficiency, and convenience, each in their right moment). NB: #1 can be furthered improved by voting for representatives who will prioritise public transportation, and last mile connectivity. I'd rather not drive, where both my hands are tied the whole time I think the system level errors are made when we lose finer grain resolution in purpose during collective decision making, perhaps...

The category wasn't about tools at all. The category was about the efficiency of mobility under an animals own power. Humans, in this category were not highly rated. The allowance of a bicycle in this case, is because it is still entirely under human power. Introducing something that's literally named auto-mobile which automatically moves under its own power, would not be an acceptable allowance into the category of animal mobility under their own power. I will top belaboring this, though.

On one level we're arguing about a 2-minute video so I can see that your interpretation is equally valid. On the other hand, it's not just a 2-minute video. We have access to decades of the behavior of both a company and a tech industry that got dragged along in its wake: • I don't think there has been any care at all for externalities in anything Apple or Steve Jobs did. And in this dimension there's no difference or progress compared to all of the rest of commercial enterprise. • I don't think what Steve Jobs saw in PARC's research was what Alan Kay and others saw. Decades of hindsight seem pretty unambiguous that there were pretty big philosophical differences between them. Along this dimension things actively got worse, less programmable and less open. I think bicycles for the mind should be see-through (pdf). That is diametrically opposed to everything Apple stands for.

I don't care about Apple or Steve Jobs. I'm not a fanboy. I think if you want to go down this road, you should look at Next, more than Apple, which was more deeply informed by PARC and it shows. Interface builder, and the huge push to make it easy for anyone to build something was certainly important. He's also a control freak, and didn't want anything open. I think these are two different things. I also feel like we're a super long way from the original point, and I don't really understand this conversation anymore, so I guess I'll just leave it here.

Thanks. All I really wanted to say was, "beware of efficiency." We got the century of cars from a caricatured view of efficiency. We should all always ask, "efficiency to do what" and "who bears the cost". And it's clear we agree in all this. So at least I feel like we understand each other where it matters.

One more thought about Steve Job's comparison: a person on a bicycle moves efficiently only in an environment that has smooth roads. In most environments not shaped by humans, a bicycle is a hindrance rather than an amplifier. In the same way, any software aiming for the "bicycle for the mind" label can be efficient only in the right context: supporting infrastructure (computers, the Internet, ...) and widespread computational literacy. It's the latter point that is usually overlooked. Most thinking is helpful only if it can be shared with others. Today's "tools for thought" support sharing thoughts only with a small number of nerds, most of who you never meet in real life. That's a good start but it won't increase anyone's quality of life in a significant way.

Yes, I agree. And I agree with @Kartik Agaram about the dangers of myopic efficiency. There is almost always a trade off or hidden accounting in order to get “efficiency”. It is rarely conducive to “life” in a general way. I apologize if I was too narrowly focused on the intent of the metaphor to begin with. I just think that metaphor mixing can sometimes lead to unhelpful conversation. All models (metaphors) are wrong. Some are useful. Extending beyond the point where a metaphor works doesn’t always lead to insight, just edges of a metaphor.