"Things That Make Us Smart" is Don Norman professing his thoughts on how technologies serve as cognitive artifacts, from past to present. There is a lot of repetition and extraneous information including Norman's thoughts on forecasting technology trends. If you have read "The Design of Everyday Things," there will be familiar ideas. Likewise, I found that the last two chapters("Soft and Hard Technology" and "Technology is Not Neutral") to be very similar to Norman's ideas in "The Design of Future Things". For Information Science folks, the chapter called "A Place for Everything, and Everything in It's Place" might be of skimming interest; in it, Norman writes about workspace organization, and touches on information retrieval, though his views concerning the latter subject have been somewhat superseded by current search engine technologies. For me, "Things That Make Us Smart" was most fascinating when Norman spoke in chapter two(and other places) about cognition; experiential and reflective thought, and how technology can elicit each.



"Things That Make Us Smart" is typical Donald Norman; take the idea of a human-centered approach to technology and run with it. For those seeking an introduction to Norman, forgo this book in favor of "The Design of Everyday Things." For those familiar with Norman's ideas, skim at your leisure.