There's a scene in a movie that captures the concept of Tools for Thought perfectly. The film Searching (2018) ¹ unfolds entirely from the perspective of computer screens. After a frustrating call to the police about his missing 16-year-old daughter, the father decides to investigate on his own. To organize his thoughts, he opens an Excel spreadsheet and begins laying out everything that's in his head. As the investigation progresses, we watch him continuously update the spreadsheet with each new piece of information.

Poster of the movie Searching¹ Blockbuster movie that does a good job in digital archaeology The more familiar we are with a tool, the more fluent we become in using it to think. Whether that's writing, sketching, drawing, or... spreadsheets. Thinking doesn't happen only in our heads: it depends on the interfaces we choose to engage with the world. As McLuhan famously quoted: