I should be ashamed of myself for turning a funny op-ed in today’s NYT into something serious. My only defense is that I think David Brooks is playing a Voltaire on us: sneaking in a serious idea under cover of silliness. Please read the original – just be careful you aren’t sipping coffee while you read, it could be tough on your keyboard. Here’s a sip of the essay:

I have melded my mind with the heavens, communed with the universal consciousness, and experienced the inner calm that externalization brings, and it all started because I bought a car with a G.P.S….
Through that experience I discovered the Sacred Order of the External Mind. I realized I could outsource those mental tasks I didn’t want to perform. Life is a math problem, and I had a calculator.
Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.
Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I like…. Memory? I’ve externalized it…. Personal information? I’ve externalized it….
Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic than ever. It’s merely my autonomy that I’m losing.

In GWTF I talk about External Intelligence (see, for example, page 54). If we know how to find a tidbit of knowledge when we need it, that knowledge is part of our potential intelligence. Attempting to store it before we need it is impossible (too much info) and maladaptive (we waste time learning it, and it will likely change before we need it). “The ability to find and evaluate information,” I say on page 55, “has become one of the most important skills you can help your child develop.

I was thinking narrowly about knowing how to find the population of Brazil when you need to know it. But Brooks points to the range of information “we” customarily download, and asks where the process might end. Consider these:

* I ask Wikipedia to tell me the population of Brazil. “Here’s your fact, sir.”

* Netflix suggests some movies I can order if I want. “You might like this.”

* I let Pandora Radio choose my music for me. “You want to listen to this.”

* The Society to Ease Dave’s Mind only sends me the news I should read….

Of course that last one is ridiculous. Next thing you know, I’ll be suggesting that the culture that surrounds your teen – the sum total of the External Intelligence she downloads – will be telling her what she thinks and how she should act.