Why Do We Follow the Hidden Logic of Our Tools? And Why Don’t We Notice What We’re Doing?
In the opening chapter of Subliminal entitled “The Two-tier Brain,” physicist (and Stephen Hawking colleague) Leonard Mlodinow explains how the two-tier brain upsets notions of human agency and leads to unexpected behaviors. People rated one detergent as superior to another (it was the same detergent) because it came in a blue-and-yellow box; people bought German wine rather than French because German beer hall music was playing in the background as they walked down the liquor aisle; and they rated the quality of silk stockings (all the same stockings) as higher because they liked the subtle scent infused in one pair — and virtually no one noticed the scent. Mlodinow explains: “nature has dictated that many processes of perception, memory, attention, learning, and judgment are delegated to brain structures outside conscious awareness.”
This is the two-tier brain. This is thinking fast and slow. This is, in Mlodinow’s words, “how your unconscious mind rules your behavior.”
Enter technology. Just because we invented cinema, television, computers, cell phones and the internet; then the omniverse and AI — we have made remarkable technological advances — does not mean the two-tier brain no longer sits squarely atop our shoulders. Two-tier response is an essential starting point from which to discuss tool logic, a largely ignored phenomenon that plays an outsized role in our lives today. Tool logic is the other-level dynamic inherent in any tool humans use.It is the (hidden) logic built into the very fabric of the technology. In writing, it is the sequential, naming, containing logic. In a cell phone it is the logic of constant arousal and divided attention. In AI, it is the logic of mimicry and mirroring. Expanding a bit, the logic of a cell phone is to foster “continuous partial attention” (Linda Stone’s words); the logic of AI is to capture user behavior from vast quantities of data in order to replicate or mirror that behavior. As user-humans, we entrain with that logic.
What Is Entraining?
Entraining is used in biology, for example, to explain diurnal patterns of sleep and wakefulness. Humans entrained for millennia with the sun: we went to bed when the sun went down and awoke when the sun came up. The important thing about entraining is we don’t question it because we are hardly aware of it. Considering a modern tool like the cell phone, once we entrain with its logic, we alter our lives to match its dynamics. We text and drive; we message our significant other on the couch when s/he is sitting five feet away; we shorten our use of language to match allowed characters in a tweet or display actions in videos to achieve a response from followers. This is entraining in action. (This is also why, as Jonathan Haidt has reported in his excellent research, it is so dangerous to give digital tools like cell phones to younger children: they blithely entrain with, and are in no way prepared to defeat, the tool’s powerful logic, which has negative consequences as they get older. Depression and suicide rates rise among teenagers who are addicted to their phones.) In simple terms, entraining means we adapt our lives to the tool’s logic; we change as we use the tool, we don’t ask the tool to change to us.
Seeing Tools as Systems
We have not been taught to look at tools as systems, so we do not see — and mostly ignore—the two-tier phenomenon of tool logic. Seeing tools not only for their practical value but as systems enables insight and especially what David Gelernter in Mirror Worlds called topsight, the ability to look at a system from a high level to see everything that is going on. Here are some systemic features of tool logic and how they affect our thinking and actions:
- Tool logic is the unwritten, undetected logic inherent in any tool humans use. This is the functional logic built into the tool. For example, the logic of a hammer is to pound a nail; the logic of the alphabet is to contain the world with words.
- Every tool has a different, unique logic.
- Humans unwittingly entrain with the logic of the tools they use.
- Primitive tools have an obvious, exterior logic: shovel, axe, matchstick.
- Sophisticated tools have a hidden, interior logic: alphabet, cell phone, artificial intelligence.
- Form swallows function. As Marshall McLuhan said about content, it is the form (logic) of a tool — with which we entrain — that determines how we think and act. The content the tool brings is a distraction to understanding any tool’s meta level.
- Tool logic is an inherent driver of the social structures humans build once they adopt — and entrain with — a given tool. Alphabets built a world in lines and rows; the internet builds a world in orbits and networks.
- Broadly speaking, when cultures encounter and then change a fundamental tool logic, a soundless collision ensues; this collision is between the dynamics and ramifications of the previous tool logic and the arrival and adoption of a new tool logic.
- Seen from the perspective of tool logic, human history takes on a new dimension: human history can be viewed as the arrival of and entraining with an emerging tool logic.
A current example: the emerging tool logic of AI is modeling (mimicking) human behavior via machine learning. Once we fully grasp that logic and are able to use it extensively, we can contrast and compare that logic to the logic of earlier tools such as the alphabet, the computer, the cell phone. When we begin to look at these tools as systems and understand the logic built into them, how we see the world changes.
What Digital Detox Shows
An example of that change is the notion of digital detox. When we use a media or technology tool, in the background of our conscious perception of content is the second-tier layer of tool logic, asking us as we use it — demanding — to entrain with that tool’s logic. Digital detox is an acknowledgement that the only way to escape tool logic dominance is to put down the tool. Our pact with our tools is simple: adhere to tool logic, or give up using the tool. There is one other way. Like Ulysses tied to the mast of his ship so he would not be tempted to follow the Sirens, we can maintain awareness — vigilant awareness — as we use our tools. That takes constant focus and intention. Newer tools such as AI may confound that awareness by fooling us because their tool logic is hidden, invisible. Which brings up yet another caution: will AI so ingratiate itself into our lives, the detox would be like living without electricity or running water — and so, prove to be unthinkable?
How to Think About Tool Logic
For some, tool logic may represent a perceptual hurdle. My suggestion: stop thinking of tools as bringers of content. Marshall McLuhan said years ago:
the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.
Instead, look at tools from the meta perspective; see them as form and consider their form or tool logic. (This distinction may trip you up because it is not how we are used to considering our tools.)
Newer tools, again at the meta level, have a different tool logic than previous tools like the alphabet or television. We need to explore what that difference means; work with and test these newer tools. Some of what we realize may delight us; some things (i.e., the current paranoia about AI) may frighten us.
Words to Algorithms to AI
We tried to contain the world with words. “In the beginning was the word …”, the Bible says. But that is alphabetic propaganda. In the beginning was oceanic consciousness; we were one with earth and sky, ocean and mountain, animal and insect. We now have much more information than words or whole libraries can contain. Words and alphabets — the latter only about three thousand years old — do wonderful, even amazing things. Words and alphabets were our first universal tools but they are now inadequate to contain the whirlwind dynamics of advanced technologies. We can no longer rely solely on words to provide relational context and integrity. Here’s why:
- Words contain; alphabets are linear, sequential, reductionist, and abstract.
- We are presently searching for new relational tools: algorithms, for example, are relational tools that can organize (and influence) data around parameters such as topical frequency, visibility, likeability, etc.
- We need to use words and ideas to insert visibility and transparency into the logic and operating premises of any algorithm that touches our lives. This is presently a meta layer not built into most retail algorithms.
- We can no longer rely solely on words to provide the meta information and relational depth we need. That is not to say we will not use words and they will not be important; it is to acknowledge that words alone cannot manage the data and facts the modern moment demands.
- Regarding tool logic, we have not understood the tool logic of our legacy systems. So faced with ChatGPT and generative AI we do not have the understanding or vocabulary to appreciate fully what these mean in our lives.
Tool Logic: Hidden Behind Slick Surfaces
Tool logic and many essential dynamics of modernity are hidden behind slick interfaces and algorithm-fueled presentations. If we hit a nail with a hammer, the cause and effect are obvious. But when we engage in doom scrolling or worry how many followers our YouTube video has or cannot concentrate on longer content because we’ve spent so much time interacting with our screens— we are often baffled. Why is this happening?
People are more dependent on devices — external technologies — than at any other point in human history. Yet, curiously, that dependence is rarely enlightening. Said differently, we are using a plethora of modern amenities and innovations, yet why are we not more conscious of and challenged — even changed — by the logic and dynamics of those technologies and innovations?
It is time we became more aware of our two-tier brains.
Once we become more meta-aware (more two-tier brain aware), we can ask: why are our educational institutions not informed by the logic and dynamics of advancing technologies? Why are we not fact-focused concerning existential issues (example: climate change) instead of algorithmically induced to be sensation seeking? To be amusement or diversion focused? Here are a few considerations that constitute an opening salvo for a larger discussion. I’m starting from the premise that prior technologies had an obvious logic; newer technologies’ logic must be explored.
- Many of our technologies, for good reason, have an exterior and interior (i.e., cars, washing machines, dishwashers, televisions, computers). We know how to operate the exterior of the technology; we know little or nothing about the interior of the technology.
- We steer or push buttons: beyond that the only people who know about these technologies are engineers, so -called ‘tech nerds.’ We have been content to focus solely on the exterior slick surfaces, taking no notice of internal workings. Not focusing on the internal workings, we miss the logic behind them.
- Previous technologies, early airplanes or automobiles for example, had simpler skeletal-like configurations. The operator could see some of the inner workings of the machine. The same was true of commonplaces like drinking water (it came from a stream or well or pump) or a washboard for cleaning clothes, a clothesline for hanging them to dry. The effect, mostly unnoticed, was that we could see, and thereby understand, the basics of simpler technologies (which were, in fact, pretty basic).
- The workings of most modern conveniences and technologies are hidden.
5. The effects of these out-of-sight, out-of-mind dynamics are at variance with the hard fought knowledge and innovation that birthed the technology. A cautionary note: from the 1930s to the 1950s doctors were featured in cigarette advertisements — “physician tested and approved”, while bloodletting was still practiced into the 1980s. False beliefs can cause great harm.
6. Newer technologies and emerging innovations like generative AI or federated learning present a goldmine of insight and realization. They challenge assumptions and push us (if we are awake and pliable enough) to rethink previous cognitive commitments, which were likely premature.
7. We are now at the juncture where it is imperative to explore and inculcate the logic of our tools — and the discoveries that led to that logic — into our thinking and expectations.
Why We Don’t Notice What We’re Doing
While our individual behaviors are changing, these changes are largely unconscious. In a little over 20 years, the cell phone — as one example — has changed the ways we drive, watch television, meet, date, mate, relate, or begin and end relationships; meanwhile social media insists on tribal unity, enabling people to behave in patterns reminiscent of hunter-gatherer clans. We stumble into these behaviors; they are inadvertent; we pick up a tool and use it, we don’t reflect on how that pick-up-and-use dynamic changes us, until researchers like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge remind us. Nor do we put into context how these newer tools differ from what our behaviors and worldview were like before we picked up those tools. We have not realized tool logic is a characteristic of any tool; every tool has a tool logic. Further, we have not understood that we entrain with any tool logic. We follow it blindly (unless we are conscious of our entraining behaviors). So, to live and act consciously is to become aware of how our thinking and behaving is significantly affected by the tool(s) we are using.
Summary: Consequences
- People entrain with the logic of their tools.
- Once entrained, they do not realize their perceptions are typically governed by the logic of the tools they are using.
- We engage with our tools at more than one level. The content level is what most of us notice. But it is the formal level where tool logic is found, that affects — and changes — us the most.
- Above the level of the content (messaging) our tools bring, sits a meta level of formal logic, what I have called tool logic. Seeing and understanding tools from this level opens up a plethora of new and exciting insights involving personal agency, social connections and structures, what we regard as important, even what we deem sacred.
- Unconscious, and unnoticed, tool logic affects our thinking and actions. What we think and how we behave — and the social structures we build — may have less to do with our conscious intention and more to do with the logic of the tools (devices) we use — which end up using us.
- As we look at the arrival of newer technologies such as generative AI, ChatGPT, the omniverse and metaverse, or federated learning, we would be wise to keep tool logic dynamics in mind. Not only will this keep us sharp and humble (we may not exercise the agency and control we think we do in our lives); new areas of learning and understanding open up when we see our behaviors and social structures in light of the tool logic that informed and directed them.
- Not realizing (or not caring) that their actions are tool-governed most people and societies begin to organize their thinking around current-use tool logic.
- Once their thinking is so organized, they begin to build social structures in accordance with the logic with which they have entrained. Social structures of church, school, and government are examples of physical manifestations built by having entrained with the logic of the alphabet. (alphabetic order)
- After social structures reflect and follow closely a given tool logic, propaganda and myth and assertions emerge to expand and defend the tool logic. This is the mature stage of tool logic. (“In the beginning was the word,” the Adam and Eve myth, constitutional literalism all are effects of defending and adhering to alphabetic tool logic.)
- A tool logic will prevail in people’s thinking and actions until another, typically newer, tool with a different logic arrives.
- When a newer tool arrives, the older tool logic and the newer tool logic clash. This is a soundless collision.
- We are now living through a series of soundless collisions. The alphabet created the alphabetic order, where words and books — the wrapper of words — were so highly prized they were considered holy, sacred. The camera, television, film, and video challenged the alphabetic order, creating the visual carnival. The arrival of the computer and the internet created digital miscellany where, as everything became digitized, things lost, or were freed from, their connections to other things. Note: each tool logic change creates a collision with the logic and workings — and especially the social structures — of the previous tool logic.
- You may have noticed a pattern: as tool logics collide, and a newer tool logic emerges (alphabet to visual carnival to digital miscellany) complications and contradictions compound.
- With the arrival of digital twins, the omniverse, algorithms, and AI, a new tool logic is emerging. This is singularity 1, where we are sharing consciousness with our tools.
- Having never understood or even articulated the tool logic of the alphabetic order, visual carnival, or digital miscellany, our next soundless collision comes as we encounter singularity 1: it is high time to embrace the learning and insights that accrue to understanding tool logic.
- Once we understand and become accustomed to the arrival and displacement dynamics of newer tool logics, we can begin to articulate those dynamics, study them for insights, and get a better handle on how and why we think as we do.
Understanding our two-tier brains is the first step in revealing tool logic — a dynamic of growing importance in our technology-fueled lives. Coming to terms with tool logic enables us to engage with a new kind of intelligence, necessary to inform our decisions as we partner with ‘thinking’ computer systems like AI.
