If we were to listen to many of the Cassandras out there today, you would think that technology, information, and progress were all bad.

They are the same people who would have objected to the printing press, the telephone, television and the automobile.

They look at education and don't understand why memorization and rote learning are no longer worthy of attention and want to put the technology genie back in the bottle.

Well, it's not going back in!  In fact, much of what we have wrought as a society and as a civilization has made us better, smarter, and awakened whole new aspects of human potential.  Journalist Clive Thompson makes the case in Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better.

My conversation with Clive Thompson: