A bicycle for the mind

Steve Jobs liked to tell a story about a Scientific American study ranking the locomotion efficiency of animals. The condor won; humans were unimpressive — until someone measured a human on a bicycle, who left the condor far behind. The bicycle is a tool that multiplies an innate ability.

The computer is the most remarkable tool we've ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

The metaphor is squarely in the tools-for-thought tradition of Licklider, Engelbart, and Kay: the machine's value is not that it thinks for us but that it amplifies what we already do. It's worth holding the image up against the devices we actually carry, and asking how much of our time with them is bicycle, and how much is television.