When the Tools Shape the Thinker: From Nietzsche to Digital Twins

The current global social media scene tends to amplify pithy takes on political and cultural events, which leans more towards polarization and spectatorship as opposed to greater understanding or reflection, If I were given the magical ability - which is definitely a bad idea - to bring back three historical figures into this discourse, I would likely go for Oscar Wilde, Bertrand Russel and Freidrich Nietzsche.

I believe Oscar would fit in like a glove and fire off weekly sound bites that most influencers can’t touch in their whole “careers”. Bertrand would likely reshape the pace, length and depth of the conversations - much to my relief. As for Friedrich Nietzsche? I guess his presence would likely be a digital grenade, whether it would blow him apart or the global discourse, that is hard to say.

In some ways, he’s a perfect fit — with his loaded terminology like “Übermensch” (the overman) and “will to power,” as well as declarations such as “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” But I’d be genuinely curious to see whether it’s too late for us to move beyond these chewable nuggets, and calm down long enough to consider not the polarizing Nietzsche the philosopher, but rather Nietzsche the poet — the one who gave us lines like: “To desert our cause when it celebrates its triumph? To climb high mountains to tempt the tempter?”

Lines like these may seem less suited to our times, but to me, they carry more meat on the bone.

But I should, just about now, pull back from my wistful sidetracking and turn the lens toward our current struggle: coping with the rapid proliferation of technology and preparing for its impact as we attempt to reshape the digital twin. One of the most profound statements Nietzsche ever made was, “Our writing tools are also working on our thoughts.” Surprisingly, this line doesn’t come from one of his published books, but rather from a letter.

It’s fair to say Nietzsche was both enamored with his own thoughts, yet insightful enough to step back and observe the changes in his thinking. This particular quote refers to his adoption of the Malling-Hansen writing ball — a device he turned to as his eyesight deteriorated to the point where writing manuscripts by hand became unfeasible.

In this second phase of his life, Nietzsche’s manuscript production more than quadrupled, yielding some of his most impactful work — including The Gay Science, Ecce Homo, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It’s possible that this surge in creative output was also influenced by his maturation and growing self-reflection in later life, especially as his health declined and his mortality came into sharper focus. Still, the most noticeable shift — both in volume and in style — was likely driven by the technology he adopted for writing.

By most accounts, his style changed considerably. While his earlier works often featured slow builds that wandered through philosophical terrain, occasionally sparking moments of poetry, his later writing became more forceful, aphoristic, and fragmented — a rapid-fire barrage of ideas and musings.

I’m not qualified to pass judgment on the value of Nietzsche’s works, and I gladly defer to the experts when it comes to highlighting the stylistic shifts that followed his use of the Malling-Hansen writing ball. The value of either style likely depends on the reader’s goals at the time: do they seek a wandering, surprising exploration — or a sense of empowerment and purpose?

Either way, we can probably agree that technology, devices, and machinery are capable of introducing certain biases and tendencies that shape not just how we act, but how we think. Yet how attuned are we to the immediate effects of using a proxy device — or to its long-term consequences?

Let’s bring this down to the practical for a moment.

Our current technological landscape is dotted with examples of popular applications that thrived not despite their — direct or reinforced — limitations, but because of them. Twitter (currently “X”) limits standard accounts to posts of 280 characters — a constraint that helped shape its identity. (One of the top all-time posts comes from comedian Andy Milonakis: “Congratulations to the astronauts that left Earth today. Good choice.”)

TikTok, while allowing videos up to 10 minutes in length, reinforces shorter content: the top 100 videos on the platform average just 15.6 seconds. And Snapchat carved out a niche in the crowded social media space by making messages disappear after being viewed — a design decision reflected in its ghost logo.

These and similar examples warrant deeper analysis into why such restrictions resonate with so many users — but here, I want to focus on something I find more immediate. What makes contemporary technologies far more influential than Nietzsche’s writing ball (which, as we’ve seen, created a critically different way of exploring thought) is that they operate simultaneously in both intimate and social spaces. The altered tendencies in how we think and communicate not only shape us internally, but are immediately fed back into our virtual interactions with others.

Just how authentic are our experiences and expressions when they’re filtered through such reinforcing biases in thought and communication?

Let’s pause for a moment and catch our breaths. I don’t want to overstate the situation or grab your attention with a call to arms. I won’t be pessimistic — not as long as we still have access to the same set of tools, both for personal use and for sharing, to create technologies that reflect our own preferred tendencies.

If something as simple as a character limit can alter the way we think and communicate, then surely we can create personal interfaces that push in the opposite direction. In fact, I’ve noticed an interesting side effect in an interface I modified with large, spacious text input areas. At first, it felt out of place — the engineer in me still wants to treat software-generated interfaces, essentially a limitless resource, with efficiency. But after overcoming that initial hesitation, I began to notice something: wider spaces for text actually invite longer and more thoughtful input from me as I use the application.

It was during the development of another application — a complex task management system — that I had a chance to take this idea a step further. My main issue with task management in general is retaining context — the who, when, why, and so on — especially when a task needs to be postponed. It’s a problem David Allen addresses quite well in the highly practical Getting Things Done.

In this case, I went beyond simply creating larger input areas. I added a variety of dedicated fields to help with quick recall of task-related context and to break tasks into more manageable parts. The interface included notes on the task, comments on decisions taken, key definitions, relevant people — and more. But I also wanted to explore something less conventional for a task management system.

Tasks are often postponed for practical reasons — waiting on a resource, conflicting priorities, and so forth. But sometimes, we delay a task in favor of less important ones for internal reasons that aren't always clear. So, I added a space to bring the source of resistance into focus. These might include missing knowledge, vague goal definitions, or even our emotional response to the work.

I realize this step might seem redundant — aren’t these concerns already part of our decision-making process? — and the approach may even appear mismatched. But as I began filling out these sections, I noticed something: putting such concerns into words helped bring subconscious resistance to the surface. That awareness gave me the chance to rationally overrule those hesitations — sometimes by taking small steps to ease the process — and move forward with the task.

Over time, I noticed that the dedicated input area invited me to elaborate on the potential reasons tasks continued to linger and lag. Some, indeed, were emotional responses: an unjust distribution of work among the team, an overwhelming sense of tedium (just writing this seems to release a bit of its hold), and sometimes a vague sense of uncertainty. At times, I found myself coming up with solutions even as I was typing out the issues.

The decision to invite myself to elaborate on something that seemed trivial at first glance resulted in a system with a built-in bias toward tackling difficult tasks.

It’s not entirely fair to ask anyone reading this to drop what they’re doing and start building their own systems with carefully chosen biases. I suspect the expectation will become more reasonable as time goes on — or I’ll become more shameless. We’ll see which one wins out.

At the very least, it should be possible for everyone to step out of their comfort zones and consider the following questions: What are the built-in tendencies of the devices, systems, or applications I use every day? Are these the tendencies that are actually driving me toward my innate and meaningful goals? Can I turn them off — or switch to (or create) systems whose biases steer me toward more purposeful outcomes? Do I have the capacity or bandwidth to switch between different systems, applications, or technologies?

Quite a handful of questions — but I believe the initial investment pays off handsomely.

In my case, these questions led me to search for a tool designed specifically for writing long-form content — something I could use to develop and eventually unify multiple pieces of text. My search combined AI assistance with community forums, a combination I prefer over traditional search engines, which tend to prioritize the loudest solution providers.

I eventually settled on a tool called Scrivener, originally developed by a dedicated individual and later expanded by a team — a product shaped by an awareness of the technological biases that affect the writing of long text.

Scrivener offers a long list of relevant features, but I’ll mention just a couple to explain why I made the effort to learn it — even though I’m already proficient in several text editors. Foremost is its ability to quickly break down text into sections and reorganize the structure intuitively — a feature that’s far more critical than it might seem at first glance.

Writer’s block is a well-known trope, often portrayed in movie montages where the author spends days doing absolutely anything but writing. But the opposite also happens — when your fingers race across the keyboard, rivaling the pace of a (relatively new) piano player. Yet moments like these are rarely as composed as a well-rehearsed performance. Doubt begins to creep in and keeps building, even as your fingers continue their onslaught.

Is this finally the flow I’ve been fermenting in my mind? Or am I building a trash pile of words that will eventually collapse and bury me? Some of you may think I’m being dramatic — but some of you know exactly what I mean.

In those moments, the ability to chop these wild outpourings into recognizable chunks is a blessing. You can either stash parts in the pantry for later, or work within more organized sections that carry a sense of tempo — like a song that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Even when not in active use, simply being aware of this capability provides peace of mind. It allows you to push forward, knowing the metaphorical collapse can be held back — and that there’s always something of value to salvage from the outburst.

Another feature I value is the ability to set both a final and a session-based word count goal for a project. Without fail, I end each writing session by checking a small window that shows how much of my session goal I’ve reached — and how far I’ve progressed toward my total.

What initially felt like an impossible goal — 60,000 words, to be specific — became more attainable with each session. Though I was far from hitting my session targets at first, I still took pride in the 300 or 400 words I managed to commit. By the time a full thousand words became more common, the growing bar tracking my total progress had also become a source of pride.

As with the earlier interface examples, this might seem trivial. But if you’re stepping into a domain that feels daunting, it genuinely helps to have a daily reminder that every bit of effort moves you forward.

I wanted to venture into this topic because I believe it’s critical that we stay aware of the technological biases that can quietly steer us toward unhelpful behavior patterns. I value critical analysis that also points to potential solutions, so I’ve tried to show how a conscious awareness of these biases can help us design — or choose — tools that support both our daily responsibilities and our long-term goals.

Technological biases open up vital leverage points within digital twins — enhancing their benefits, increasing adoption rates, and bolstering the co-creation process. I’ll be revisiting this theme as we dive deeper into digital twin applications.