From bicycles to treadmills
In 1990, Steve Jobs said,
I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that weāre tool-builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list; it was not too proud of a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didnāt look so good. But then somebody at Scientific Americanhad the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And a man on a bicycleāor a human on a bicycleāblew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts. And thatās what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is, itās the most remarkable tool that weāve ever come up with. And itās the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
In 2013, Sal Khan said,
You had a first wave in the late nineties, early two-thousandās, it was kind of obvious, the internetās about disseminating information, hey education! [ā¦] Well the PC, I mean Steve Jobs famously, originally, thought that the personal computer was going to be a treadmill for the brain .
And so in the twenty-three years since the creation of the World Wide Web, weāve managed to confuse, āa bicycle for the mindā with, āa treadmill for the brain.ā
One helps you get where you want under your own power. Anotherās used to simulate the natural world and is typically about self-discipline, self-regulation, and self-improvement. One is empowering; one is slimming. One you use with friends because itās fun; the other you use with friends because it isnāt . One does things to you; one does things for you.
A mind is something human. A brain is an organ, something biological. We care about brains because they are the seat of our minds. You fall in love with someoneās mind. You gamify someoneās brain. Minds meet. Brains collide. You do things with one. You do things to another.
In 1824, James Hardie wrote of a new punishment designed for prisoners,
It is constant and sufficiently severe; but it is its monotonous steadiness and not its severity, which constitutes its terror, and frequently, breaks down the obstinate spirit.
Hardie was talking about the invention of the treadmill.
These juxtapositions are unfair; theyāre gotchas. Theyāre also relevant. Our tools and services increasingly do things to us, not for us. And they certainly arenāt about helping us to do things with them. There are few places this is clearer than our childrenāor more precisely, our students.