Regardless of what tech stack you’re using, it’s increasingly clear that tech is changing the environment in which we work. In particular our cognitive environment. The generative artificial intelligence wave has made clear that the ways we use technology are likely to change. There are lots of issues, so how do we handle it? As a complement to my post about technologies, I think that a necessary component of an AI approach will increasingly be an understanding of human learning, that is: knowing cognition.
Using ‘smart’ technologies is changing how we think, work, and learn. Ed Hutchins helped us understand distributed cognition, but we’re also seeing that it has effects if used wrongly. For instance, folks seem to be less connected because the technology substitutes. There are also impacts on what we learn when we use technology as a substitute for thinking, apparently an all-too-common phenomena. That means we need to know when, and how to use technology to supplement our thinking, not replace it.
And, yes, we definitely change how we do tasks when we can. With the advent of the GPS, we changed how we navigate. We no longer needed to bring, and be able to interpret, a mapbook. Though it helps to still be able to use one. Particularly when the GPS sends you awry. Similarly with digital address books; I don’t know my kids phone numbers, because they’re in my system!
Moreover, we prefer to outsource different things. Some folks still want to code, while I’ve left that. Others have handed off some tech responsibilities; my wife now depends on me to use the television! Which is all fine, if we’re making conscious decisions. When we become dependent on someone or something without recourse, however, we can face problems.
Which brings us to the question of how we make the decisions. I’ll suggest that if we don’t know what matters in our personal choices of cognition, we won’t make good decisions. That goes, by the way, for whoever is making decisions (we hear of execs who have unrealistic expectations of what the technology will do). I’ve long argued that what will be the sustainable knowledge base, going forward, is what technology can do (and what it can’t), and how people think. And work. And learn. Plus, some design and business basics, probably. That’s relevant here.
To make good decisions about what you can outsource, or not, depends on what its impact will be on your thinking. Does it support you making good decisions, and improving them? Or are you outsourcing them, and therefore diminishing your ability to make them? It may be as simple as that, but I believe it’s more. I’m probably biased, but even with that caveat, I’m inclined to think that everyone needs to know the basics of cognition. (Hence why I made my take freely available.)
I continue to think that we have to do the thinking first. It doesn’t have to be elegant, a sketch or a few bullets will do, but you have to do the important thinking first. Then, you can use tech to also address that thought, and use the tech as a way to get feedback. However, you’re the one analyzing results, seeing what it comes up with, improving your thoughts if it’s come up with something you like, and rejecting anything that doesn’t resonate. It’s a support, not a replacement.
I wanted my Learning Science book to not say ‘“or Instructional Designers” in the title, though the publisher realized that’s their market, because we’re all instructional designers. (And, to be fair, the later chapters err on the side of learning, as opposed to interface design or public speaking. Still…) Whether for ourselves, our kids, friends, there are always people we’re helping learn. We may not have the formal role, but we do a better job when we know how we think.
So, in addition to suggesting a focus on small hybrid multi-agent systems for AI, I also think we need to also personally know cognition, and learning in particular, so we know how and when to augment our thinking. And, when not to. That’s why I’m involved with the Learning Development Accelerator, by the way. And am working on a ‘learning to learn’ curriculum. Those are my thoughts, what are yours?
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