the screen is not a bicycle for the mind. a screen might increase the quantity and speed of human output, but is of little help at the important stuff. the computer is not especially capable of transforming human thought. Any good mind-augmenting technology should be good at helping us think better thoughts than we would without it.
your mind doesn't "go" anywhere. your train of thought is not a train, not a tool, not technology. it's a process, and not one that can be quickened. it's primordial soup, mycelial mat, strange loop, sourdough starter. there's no direction it's moving for a bicycle to help. the best you can do is give it some happy conditions and watch it go.
things that help you think better thoughts:
- going on a walk
- learning to program
- memorizing a poem
- writing, especially by hand
- dreaming
- staring at fire
- being in love
- looking up at a tree
- cleaning pine needles out of lichen
- understanding mistakes you've made
- leaving off in the middle
it's maybe tempting to say that art-anabling technology is a bicycle for the mind. bicycles help your feet get somewhere, but that's not all feet are meant to do. a human on a bicycle cannot dance on their way to the bakery, etcetc.
some caveats
- editing text is helpful to organize your thoughts
- counterpoint: literature and philosophy haven't "improved" since the screen(?)
- computer science is (like poetry and the number zero) a bicycle for the mind, and screens are definitely bicycles for computer science
- counterpoint: all technology does this. the talent of the human mind is not completing but coming up with tasks that other brains couldn't.