Computers are “extending” our intelligence through a panoply of electronic devices. But whether we are creating anything of more value is debatable. We spend more and more of our lives hitting computer keys but not more time thinking, and the general level of culture does not seem to be rising — indeed it seems to be sinking into an attention-deficit-disordered world wherein, to paraphrase Henry Ford, history has become “bunk.”

It’s the triumph of process over substance. Consider how much time is spent dealing with computer problems. Crashes, lost files, endlessly updated software and planned obsolescence require us to spend inordinate time dealing with living with these machines per se rather than making something with them.

But then the “artificial intelligence” of computers and the humble mammalian intelligence that created them are merging. When a computer has a headache, so do we, and when it breaks down, so do we.