One benefit of reading a wide variety of books is that you come across words that you’ve never heard of before. Take the name of this channel for instance. I discovered the word Eudaimonia when learning about Greek philosophy. It translates loosely as human flourishing or simply “happiness”, but it is not a word I’d ever heard used in conversation. As a result, if I was to talk about it with a friend, there would have been a chance I would have mispronounced the word. So, what do you do to make sure you can pronounce a word correctly? You can consult YouTube. By searching for the word, you’ll then get access to any number of videos that contain that word. You may watch a video on a person who is an authority in that field, or you may watch several videos to confirm the common pronunciation across the board. Despite the cynics, technology is changing the way we think for the better.

In recent years, human vs computer chess matches that have taken place have been dominated by the machine, even against the greatest chess grandmasters in the world. However, when a human and a computer work together as a team, the best team can beat the best individual or the best machine, even if the human in the team is not the best chess player. In fact, the best team doesn’t necessarily contain the best human chess players, even if the computers on both teams were the same. What matters is who is most proficient at collaborating with a computer.

Machines can also help us with our memory. We cannot remember everything and even the particulars we do remember occasionally warp over time to the point where they’re incorrect. Artificial memory­ can help. Devices capture elements of our lives passively, whether it’s text messages, status updates or photographs on our phone. There are obvious concerns regarding privacy, storage and ownership that need to be dealt with but on the positive side, being able to search what is captured provides us with an ever-increasing artificial memory.

These days, whether it’s tweets, Facebook statuses, blog posts or emails, we’re writing more than we have ever done before. The majority of this content is not of a high quality. However, the fact that more writing is taking place means that more quality material is being produced. All this writing helps to bring clarity to our thinking. By articulating your thinking process and noting down your thoughts it allows you to think more critically. Any vagueness in your mind about your ideas can be cleared by documenting them. Having an audience for your writing, clarifies the mind yet further. This “audience effect” causes our performance to change when we know people are watching, or reading. Digital communication has increased the amount of writing we do and as a result has also had an effect on our memory, as writing something down enables you to better remember it.

One subject that computers are substantially better at than humans is data crunching, in particular large amounts of data. Analysis of information has become easier with simple tools available to the public. School teachers can generate word clouds from students’ essays to spot and help eradicate bad habits such as too much repetition. In the world of politics, the ability to record, review and have access to what a politician has said in previous speeches and television programs make it easy to spot hypocrisy and policy flaws which allow the public the opportunity to make a more informed decision. Online video has provided a way for people to share their ideas with the world. The YouTube platform allows for experimentation. Most of these experiments will fail, but some are innovative and successful. The nature of the platform means that these videos are then imitated and improved upon quickly by others. One of the most popular types of video that has evolved on YouTube is the “How To” video style, educating the viewers.

Humans are great at recalling the essence of a conversation or subject, but bad at recalling the details. We have the same issue with factual knowledge. Using Google or Wikipedia for help to remind us of specifics is now a common occurrence. For example, if you’re talking about a film you’ve seen a long time ago, you will still probably know the genre and the storyline, but may be less likely to remember the names of actors that appeared in the movie. Despite search engines being often used to help us answer questions we don’t know; some research suggests that up to 40% of queries are for remembering details we already previously knew.

Mass collaboration is now easily achievable and straightforward to engage in. It is now simple to start a whatsapp or facebook group conversation with friends to decide which film to see at the weekend. The fact that it is so easy to set up a collaboration means that people are doing more of them. There is wisdom in crowds. The judgement of a crowd is often better than an individual expert as each individual will have an incomplete part of the picture in his or her head. By putting these parts together, you can establish a near complete picture. Whether it’s teamwork on google docs or a worldwide conversation via a hashtag on twitter, technology now allows us to create more complete pictures via collective thinking.

When it comes to learning, one disadvantage of the traditional classroom environment is that with only one teacher and several pupils, each pupil cannot necessarily learn at their own pace. Tutoring on a one-to-one basis works better for this reason but is not always possible. By utilising academic websites that educate through online video, teachers can spend more time with pupils who need help and let others who feel more comfortable, jump ahead.

Technology, in particular communication technology including social media can often help liberate people that are being oppressed. Many protests and demonstrations have been organised and magnified in size with a speed that was previously not possible. There is no doubt that technology has affected social and political change in our world. For social change to take place, members of society need to broadcast their thoughts and think in public. This will generate collective action as a person is more likely to stand up for what they believe in if they know other people agree with them and are also willing to stand. Authority has the means to monitor the population but technology has now provided the ability for members of society to monitor authority. For example, many injustices that take place are now recorded on video via smart phones, which help to punish the perpetrators in many cases.

There is no doubt that computers have accomplished feats that the human mind could never achieve. However, there are also activities that the human mind is unique in completing. The key is acknowledging the use of machines and utilising them alongside our minds. In the future, the ability for a computer to give us near instant answers after analysing mountains of information would prove invaluable alongside human intuition, especially in a time-critical situation. This could be in the fields of law or medicine or simply playing chess.