• Hi, I’m Brad Abare

  I'm a make-it-happen guy working with big idea people. I design teams and orchestrate strategy so that great ideas I believe in get done.
  
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There’s a great article by Damon Darlin in yesterday’s New York Times about technology’s effect on our mind. Darlin’s article is somewhat of a summary supplement to Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic column from earlier this summer, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

Of particular interest was the point about how normal it is to fear—even shun—technological innovation. “Socrates feared the impact writing would have on man’s ability to think. The advent of the printing press summoned similar fears.”

When Hewlett-Packard invented the HP-35, the first hand-held scientific calculator, in 1972, the device was banned from some engineering classrooms. Professors feared that engineers would use it as a crutch, that they would no longer understand the relationships that either penciled calculations or a slide rule somehow provided for proficient scientific thought.

But the HP-35 hardly stultified engineering skills. Instead, in the last 36 years those engineers have brought us iPods, cellphones, high-definition TV and, yes, Google and Twitter. It freed engineers from wasting time on mundane tasks so they could spend more time creating.

It’s an exciting time to be alive, isn’t it?

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