Thread by @anniemurphypaul

Designers of digital tools aim to make them as “seamless” as possible—such that our technology supplies us with the information we need right away, without us having to ask for it. But it’s precisely these qualities that undermine our own sense of how difficult a task is. 1/8

An interesting new paper by Matthew Fisher and Daniel Oppenheimer in Psychological Science looks at what happens when our mental work is augmented by technological resources—say, using spellcheck to correct our writing. 2/8

The use of such "external sources," they found, appears to "distort metacognitive assessments of one’s own abilities." In other words, when we extend our minds with technology, we tend to lose touch with how hard the task is and what we would be able to do on our own. 3/8

This may lead us to become overconfident—to assume that we know more, or can do more, than is actually the case. Fisher and Oppenheimer found that such "errors of overconfidence" could be prevented in two ways: by introducing a delay, and by instituting active choice. 4/8

When we have to wait for assistance, or when we have to consciously choose to seek out assistance, we're led to engage in metacognition about the task. This kind of thinking helps us calibrate both our sense of the task and our sense of our own abilities. 5/8

To me, their findings are an argument for making technology LESS seamless—more "seamful," one might say.

We ourselves could choose tools, or choose settings on our tools, that force us to do more of the mental work ourselves. 6/8

While that might seem perverse, returning to ourselves some of the work that would usually done by our tech will benefit us in the end, by giving us a more accurate sense of what we actually know and can do. 7/8

Here's the paper by Fisher and Oppenheimer:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117… 8/8