In 'Essays: Computing Convivially', fix some garden path phrasing issues

site/essays/Computing Convivially.md

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 Jobs’ speech has its roots in an intellectual and practical project Douglas Engelbart launched nearly thirty years earlier with his 1962 report, <cite>Augmenting Human Intellect</cite>. Engelbart outlined a vision of computer programs for note-taking, ready to be adapted to each user, so as to “harness your creativity more continuously.” A variety of “personal knowledge management” and “tools for thought” apps carry on this stream today. Curiously, though, “tools for thought” enthusiasts often end up focused on the tools rather than the thinking. I confess: I have indulged in this mistake myself. A folder on this very laptop contains thousands of plain text files, some 1½ million words of notes. I have spent many hours reorganizing them, experimenting with naming schemes,  trying to get the links between them just right, and following interesting trails through them. All my tinkering with that system has not made me a better thinker. No intelligence inheres in interlinked documents. (Else the world wide web would have made geniuses of us all.)
 
-One reason I get sidetracked by tinkering is zeal for the quality of my tools. Another is that tinkering is always easier than actually thinking. I suspect, though, that the impulse is higher with this specific machine. The flexibility, the sheer generality, of computers means they do not focus or direct our use. They are not like a camera, dedicated solely to capturing photographs. This is computers’ greatness, but it makes them as easy to misuse as to use well. Their programmability can mislead us into believing the hard work of thinking itself is avoidable. Phrases like “outboard brain” indicate a failure to understand how thinking works, and why it is—always—work. That goes equally for a notes system made up of plain text files and for chat interfaces to large language models. Engelbart’s dream, like Jobs’ word-picture, was of computers as tools allowing us think better; too often we act as if they will do the thinking for us. We treat them like automobiles instead of bicycles. No matter how good our notes system or how fluent our chatbots, though, true understanding is hard-won. We have to pedal.
+One reason I get sidetracked by tinkering is zeal for the quality of my tools. Another is that tinkering is always easier than actually thinking. I suspect, though, that the impulse is higher with this specific machine. The flexibility, the sheer generality, of computers means they do not focus or direct our use. They are not like a camera, dedicated solely to capturing photographs. This is computers’ greatness, but it is also what makes them easy to misuse. Their programmability can mislead us into believing the hard work of thinking itself is avoidable. Phrases like “outboard brain” indicate a failure to understand how thinking works, and why it is—always—work. That goes equally for a notes system made up of plain text files and for large language model chat interfaces. Engelbart’s dream, like Jobs’ word-picture, was of computers as tools allowing us think better; too often we act as if they will do the thinking for us. We treat them like automobiles instead of bicycles. No matter how good our notes system or how fluent our chatbots, though, true understanding is hard-won. We have to pedal.
 
 As with any such imaginative framing, then, the “implementation details” matter very much. After all, some of my time spent with my notes system *has* been illuminating. Writing down ideas and considering how they relate to each other has sharpened, clarified, and expanded my thinking over time. Good tools can provide scaffolding for that kind of work. They can make it easier to use one’s existing notes for reflection and revision. At the end of the day, though, the thinking has to be done in real time by a human. That is what makes pen and paper note-taking so powerful.[^writing] A convivial note-taking app would respect that reality—and promise no more.