Revised Intro and Body Paragraphs

Gerald Lappay

RWS 100

Professor Werry

September 9, 2014

How often do you think out loud? Do you accidentally blurt out your thoughts? Do you try to voice your opinions publicly? Do you post thoughts you think are deep and meaningful just to get attention on social media? This piece touches on some of these subjects in Clive Thompson’s book, “Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better”. Clive Thompson is a Canadian writer whose works have appeared on The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Wired, and other famous publications. Most of his work relates to technology and its social and developmental impacts. While most older people think negatively of the post-1990s-millennials, Thompson seeks to shed some light on them; especially through his concept of public thinking. What is public thinking? In this piece, I analyze Thompson’s idea of public thinking through discussing the main claims and arguments he presents throughout Smarter Than You Think.

Thompson introduces the concept of public thinking through facts, research, and accounts of online bloggers. What seems to be a dull account of a Kenyan blogger. turns into a staggering estimation about the volume of internet posts created by the post-1990s-millennials, and how it compares to large treasuries of writing. “I calculate that we’re composing at least 3.6 trillion ords daily, or the equivalent of 36 million books every day. The entire U.S. Library of Congress, by comparison, holds around 35 million books.” (47) Successfully captivating readers with these statistics, Thompson starts to pitch his main idea to us. Why not post more of our thoughts on the internet? I’m not talking about small, trivial things such as seven word status updates on Facebook about how horrible your day has gone. I’m talking about bigger ideas. How to cure diseases, how to contribute to the world’s problems. Pitch ideas on some online community where the biggest and brightest of them all can communicate,  contribute, design, and create. The internet has the potential to make these things into a reality, and Thompson prove this point throughout his piece.