In this groundbreaking book, wired writer clive thompson argues that the internet is boosting our brainpower, encouraging new ways of thinking and making us more not less intelligent as is so often claimed. Our lives have been changed utterly and irrevocably by the rise of the internet and it is only now that we can begin to analyse this extraordinary phenomenon. The author argues that as we rely more and more for machines to help us think, our thinking itself is becoming richer and more complex. We're able to learn more, retain it longer, to write in curious new forms and even to think entirely new types of thoughts. Smarter than you think is filled with stories of people who are living through these profound technological changes. In a series of postcards from the near future, we meet characters such as gordon bell, an ageing millionaire who is saving a digital copy of everything that happens to him and eric hovitz, one of the world's leading artificial - intelligence researchers, wh