The earliest known writing probably emerged in southern Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago, but for most of recorded history, reading and writing remained among the most elite human activities: the province of monarchs, priests and nobles who reserved for themselves the privilege of lasting words.

Tom Chatfield

Categorized in : Words History Writing Reading

Above all, the translation of books into digital formats means the destruction of boundaries. Bound, printed texts are discrete objects: immutable, individual, lendable, cut off from the world.

Tom Chatfield

cutting mean book

From exam grading to health education to professional training to democratic participation, paths towards self-realization and success in the world are often daunting and obscure: journeys only the privileged feel confident setting off along.

Tom Chatfield

health-education journey self

In an age of constant live connections, the central question of self-examination is drifting from ‘Who are you?’ towards ‘What are you doing?

Tom Chatfield

connections self age

We live in an age of miracles so commonplace that it can be difficult to see them as anything other than part of the daily texture of living

Tom Chatfield

texture miracle age

I spoke at TED Global 2010 about the ways that video games engage the brain, and in particular, the idea of reward structures: how a challenge or task can be broken down and presented to make it as engaging as possible.

Tom Chatfield

broken games ideas

If computers remain far worse than us at image recognition, a certain over-confident combination of man and machine can elsewhere take inaccuracy to a whole new level.

Tom Chatfield

machines levels men

Time, presence and physical attentiveness are our most basic proxies for something ultimately unprovable: that we are understood.

Tom Chatfield

attentiveness proxy understood

Forget artificial intelligence - in the brave new world of big data, it's artificial idiocy we should be looking out for.

Tom Chatfield

looking intelligence brave world

As commentators like the American psychologist Gary Marcus have noted, it's extremely difficult to teach a computer to recognise cats. And that's not for want of trying.

Tom Chatfield

cats difficult want trying

We are all amateur attention economists, hoarding and bartering our moments - or watching them slip away down the cracks of a thousand YouTube clips.

Tom Chatfield

youtube down moments attention

Modern motor vehicles are safer and more reliable than they have ever been - yet more than 1 million people are killed in car accidents around the world each year, and more than 50 million are injured. Why? Largely because one perilous element in the mechanics of driving remains unperfected by progress: the human being.

Tom Chatfield

progress car people world

Once the words of a book appear onscreen, they are no longer simply themselves; they have become a part of something else. They now occupy the same space, not only as every other digital text, but as every other medium, too.

Tom Chatfield

words digital space book

In classrooms full of students who range from brilliant to sullen disaffection, it's games - and often games alone - that I've seen engage every single person in the room. For some, the right kind of play can spell the difference between becoming part of something, and the lifelong feeling that they're not meant to take part.

Tom Chatfield

person alone feeling single

Video games are a special kind of play, but at root, they're about the same things as other games: embracing particular rules and restrictions in order to develop skills and experience rewards. When a game is well-designed, it's the balance between these factors that engages people on a fundamental level.

Tom Chatfield

video-games game experience people

I love video games. I'm also slightly in awe of them. I'm in awe of their power in terms of imagination, in terms of technology, in terms of concept. But I think, above all, I'm in awe at their power to motivate, to compel us, to transfix us, like really nothing else we've ever invented has quite done before.

Tom Chatfield

technology imagination power love

The really interesting stuff about virtuality is what you can measure with it. Because what you can measure in virtuality is everything. Every single thing that every single person who's ever played in a game has ever done can be measured.

Tom Chatfield

person game you single

Over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, we evolved to find certain things stimulating, and as very intelligent, civilized beings, we're enormously stimulated by problem solving and learning.

Tom Chatfield

find things learning problem

The biggest neurological turn-on for people is other people. This is what really excites us. In reward terms, it's not money; it's not being given cash - that's nice - it's doing stuff with our peers, watching us, collaborating with us.

Tom Chatfield

doing nice money people

Mass literacy is a phenomenon of the past few centuries, and one that has reached the majority of the world's adult population only within the past 75 years.

Tom Chatfield

population past world years

As a medium, electronic screens possess infinite capacities and instant interconnections, turning words into a new kind of active agent in the world.

Tom Chatfield

words new infinite world