The more that people depended on explicit guidance from software programs, the less engaged they were in the task and the less they ended up learning. The findings indicate, van Nimwegen concluded, that as we “externalize” problem solving and other cognitive chores to our computers, we reduce our brain’s ability “to build stable knowledge structures”—schemas, in other words—that can later “be applied in new situations.”29 A polemicist might put it more pointedly: The brighter the software, the dimmer the user.
