Thinking is being outsourced

Sir, you end up your editorial about future travel conditions on August 12 with a “computer junkies trapped in long-haul will have an unusual privilege foisted upon them: time to think. Not everyone will enjoy that, but it is scarcely a fate worse than death”. With it you quite elegantly let through your thoughts about computers being substitutes for thinking but gallantly ignore the fact that the average non computer carrying traveler might also be doing a lot less of that.

This is not meant as a defense of the computer but more as a denunciation of the generalized lack of thinking and that is spreading as a virus to such an extent that even many that presumptuously refer to themselves as think tanks are not feeling much responsible for doing it. How this sad evolution has come about takes more than a brief letter to discuss but it has to do with how responsibilities have been so haphazardly delegated. Two examples of it are how the elites of a society have delegated completely the management of it in the hands of politicians, and bankers, the credit evaluation to a couple of credit rating agencies. In other words, what has been happening is that thinking itself is being more and more outsourced, unfortunately, not necessarily to the best providers.