Tools for Thought (TfT) is a general term for tools, especially computer-based ones, designed to augment human thinking and understanding rather than only to store or process information.
In their October 2019 essay How can we develop transformative tools for thought?, Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen use the phrase as a catch-all and write that it has been widely used since Kenneth Iverson's work in the 1950s and 1960s introducing the term. They describe a dream, pursued by pioneers including Vannevar Bush, Doug Engelbart, Ivan Sutherland and Seymour Papert, in which computers would enable tools to augment human intelligence. Bush's hypothetical 📝Memex, described in 1945, is one of the earliest such designs.
Howard Rheingold's book Tools for Thought, first published in 1985, follows the people who pursued the idea of using computers to amplify thought and communication. A revised edition from MIT Press in 2000 adds a chapter drawing on 1999 interviews with Engelbart, Bob Taylor and Alan Kay, among others.
The term has its critics among its own users. Matuschak and Nielsen note that the word "tool" implies a certain narrowness, and, following Kay, treat a new medium for thought as the more powerful aim.
Related practices share the goal of thinking with external systems: 📝Personal Knowledge Management, 📝Networked Thought and the 📝Zettelkasten, each concerned with capturing ideas outside the mind and connecting them.