My recent Knowledge Café, Interthinking: Can We Think with AI?, attracted around 150 registrations from 36 countries, with approximately 60 people joining us on the day.
The conversation explored whether people can genuinely think together and, if so, whether AI might become part of that process.
Neil Mercer uses the term interthinking to describe the use of language for collective thinking. The idea is that conversation does more than allow us to exchange thoughts that have already been formed. Through questioning, responding, and building on what others say, thoughts and understandings may emerge that none of us brought into the conversation.
I had already written an introductory piece, Interthinking: Thinking Together, explaining the idea and why our best thinking often happens in conversation.
But the Café revealed that not everyone was convinced. Some participants questioned whether thinking could really happen between people rather than solely within individual minds. Others wondered whether interthinking was simply another name for brainstorming or co-creation, or whether a new word was needed at all.
These were useful objections. They encouraged me to look more deeply at Neil Mercer’s work, explore some of the research behind the idea, and sharpen my own understanding. The result was a much fuller piece, Interthinking Is Real, in which I address these questions and explain why I believe conversation can become part of the thinking process itself.
This is a good example of how my work develops. I write something and put an idea into the world. I bring it into conversation through a Knowledge Café. People respond to it, question it, challenge it, and sometimes disagree with it. Their responses send me back to reading and writing, where I reconsider and further develop the idea.
The Café did not settle the question. It did something more useful: it challenged me to return to the idea, explore it more deeply, and think again.
Knowledge Letter: Issue: 315 (Subscribe)
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Image Credits: Midjourney
(Public Domain)
