(Sorry for taking last week off. Someone exploded a car bomb nearby that shook my house and my psyche, and I responded by driving two hours away to run a half-marathon I hadn’t trained for. Today I’m making good on the technology note I promised a couple weeks ago, and including some other stuff I’d jotted down, as well as some newer stuff from the last few days, so this week’s edition is kind of a two-for-one Frankennewsletter that is stuffed with very non-AI, human goodness. Don’t thank me until you get to the end. I hope you do – get to the end, that is.)
When my daughter was seven (the same age as Alice), we were reading Alice in Wonderland at bedtime when I misread a word because it was blurry and I guessed wrong.
That never happened before.
Hoping against hope that it was just the dim light, I went for an eye exam.
I’ve been wearing glasses in front of screens and pages ever since.
As Victorian-era Scottish philosopher (because who among us doesn’t need one of those today?!) Thomas Carlyle put it, “Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.”
Even if you forgive the grammatical sexism of Carlyle’s time, and you appreciate his influence on intellectual giants like Ralph Waldo Emerson, at a glance his claim seems a bit much.
The first time I quoted Carlyle was on a high school course blog post designed to get students thinking and talking about their use of technology. I chose the quote precisely because I thought its extremes would elicit strong opinions. Privately, I thought homo sapiens are more than nothing without tools, and not anywhere close to omniscient no matter how advanced the tools.
If you’ve ever thought of something worth saying after a conversation ended, when it was too late for your wit or insight to make a difference, you understand the French concept of l’esprit de l’escalier. Now imagine how you might feel about seasoning a conversation that started with the above blog post and ended 12 years ago.
I started using the public internet in teaching California high school courses for two reasons: 1) using 2.0 tools can connect learners with the people and information they need and can’t source locally, and 2) effectively using the internet both benefits a learner in real time and demonstrates skill to future opportunity providers such as prospective employers, admissions officers, et al.
Essentially, I believed that using technology made graduates more capable, and therefore more valuable.
Sometimes we need tools to observe things that are very big, very small, or very complex. We’ve developed microscopes, binoculars, telescopes, fMRI machines, and many other instruments to more accurately observe the world and the universe around us, and often to achieve desired outcomes more speedily and effectively as a result.
We have gone to extreme lengths. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) consists of two 2.5 mile-long vacuum systems. Built to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity, this massive, multi-site instrument is the first to observe the far universe using gravitational waves instead of light. No doubt about it: LIGO is the best tool for the job when you’re investigating black holes.
Those of us who aren’t investigating black holes, or supported by hundreds of millions of dollars from the National Science Foundation, still use an amazing amount of hardware and software every day. Your phone may as well be the Large Hadron Collider to people who were alive 80 years ago.
Yes, we can do oh, so much with technology. But even if you’re consistently using the internet for more than watching YouTube for the lulz, the reason I may have to admit that Carlyle had a point has more to do with the “nothing” than the “all.” We may not be “all” with tools, but when we put them down, we often find that we have reduced ourselves to less than what we were when we started.
Dear friends of mine – brilliant, good, previously strong people – have proven themselves incapable of weaning themselves off their tools, even when those tools have demonstrably caused their natural skills to atrophy.
One can no longer find his way around without GPS. It’s pathetic. I’m looking at landmarks and the position of the sun. He’s bumping into walls and cursing at the wi-fi. Another swears she can stop taking her phone to bed at any time. Maybe she’ll miss a ding! dopamine hit. If she interacted this way with a sentient being or a chemical compound, we would have organized an intervention by now.
So what future effects can we predict for the unbridled rush to adopt AI in school, at work, and in private moments when you confide questions that you think no one else will see?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against technology as a way of improving our lives. I’m grateful for the prescription eyeglasses that make it possible for me to clearly see the screen on which I am typing this right now. But while I won’t live in Aldous Huxley-level denial about their benefits, my eyes are also wide open to the effect that wearing glasses has had on my natural capabilities. I will never be able to read a dimly lit bedtime story without them again.
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Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.
Sharing the Learning (I) –
Thank you to “Wired For Success” podcast host and all-around good human Claudia Gorbutt for inviting me on her show, which you can listen to HERE. In her words: “Dr. Preston shares his revolutionary approach to healing cognitive and emotional ‘injuries’ caused by school, and how we can rebuild our learning fitness to thrive in every area of life. Whether you're a parent, teacher, lifelong learner, or just school-scarred and curious, this conversation will change how you think about learning.”
Sharing the Learning (II) –
Last week the UCLA Anderson School of Management invited me to host a webinar. I was a management consultant before I started teaching, and this event was like going home – as the hero with new insight to help the community. Every business problem is ultimately a people problem, and every people problem ultimately contains a learning solution. I appreciated all the positive feedback from smart, successful executives who took Open-Source Learning principles back to their organizations.
What I’m Eating (In) –
Memorial Day Weekend is behind us, and that means it’s officially ice cream season.* (*It’s always ice cream season.) My wife made the first batch of the year the night before hosting friends for brunch. At some point in the evening, we noticed that our ancient ice cream maker was creating gray streaks in the product. Since neither one of us is a fan of “Metal Shavings Grease Ripple Surprise,” we tossed the batch and the equipment and went back to the drawing board. I never formally review or endorse anything here, but I do share what I use when I’m really un/happy about it, so if you’re still standing in front of the freezer section at the supermarket wondering whatever happened to affordable, natural ice cream, check out the Cuisinart ICE-21. It did so well on a non-dairy cashew and macadamia concoction she made that it sent all our guests running to online translators for different ways to say “best ice cream ever.” Buy local if you can, so that Amazon doesn’t build another warehouse around the next corner that further screws up your neighborhood traffic and air quality.
What I’m Eating (Out) –
Including this since it hardly ever happens. In the car on the way to the half-marathon that I wasn’t at all prepared for but was still better than 45 mph dust winds and car bombs, my wife and I got hungry. Since the run closed down Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice (which was super fun to run right down the middle of with no cars), all the restaurants and stores ran promotions the night before. First stop – you run 13.1 miles, you get dessert first – was a free scoop at Salt & Straw (in case I failed to impress upon you in the last item just how much I love ice cream). I tasted the Coffee & Stone Fruit Marmalade but ultimately went with the Chocolate Chili Crisp Peanut Butter Cups.
Then we walked over to Butcher’s Daughter for hearts of palm ceviche and a mushroom pizza.
What I’m Watching–
When we got to the hotel we wanted escapist entertainment, and the TV spirits provided. I don’t know if this qualifies as a genre, or a trend, or a leitmotif, or just my fond remembrance of childhood in the 1970s and 1980s, but there were several movies and TV shows (Smokey and the Bandit, Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, and Every Which Way But Loose, to name a few) that featured sardonic, cool dudes of questionable morality who drove badass vehicles and got sh*t done (adding Star Wars for Han Solo, now that I think of it). I don’t know who had the bright idea to greenlight a 2025 show with all those formulaic character/plot ingredients, plus the mandatory car launching through midair on its side, plus all the authentic sets (wood paneling!) and wardrobe (big collars and bell bottoms!) and vehicles (police car with those chrome roof light mounts!) but thank you to the fine folks at Max (soon again to be HBO Max) for Duster. The real-life Plymouth Duster couldn’t hold a candle to my old GTO for a ¼ mile, and more responsible reviewers suggest that the plot eventually gets as out of control as a muscle car with bald tires on black ice, but right now it’s my favorite hour of TV fun. From Mashable: “Duster builds out a gritty, groovy, odd-couple crime caper that's already looking to stake its claim as the most fun show of the summer.”
What I’m Reading (Long) –
This section is becoming an ongoing book report/club of one until either you chime in on the conversation or I finish Robert Sapolsky’s Determined. I’m still in the first 100 pages, but I love Sapolsky’s writing style (lots of conversational tics and cursing, and enough footnotes and endnotes to make David Foster Wallace proud). Most importantly, I’m learning a lot about the research studies that people point to when they talk about whether we actually have free will. A few years ago I was at a conference with Daniel Dennett, and I wish I’d known more about his logic (and the flaws in it) at the time. I’m also fascinated by the part of our brain (the insula) that developed millions of years ago to detect bad tasting/smelling food and keep us healthy, and how it took on reporting to the amygdala about things like morality and aesthetics, which developed much more recently. The next time you hear someone say something like, “He makes me sick to my stomach” remember that it’s likely accurate reporting – smelling or tasting something bad increases the likelihood that we judge negatively, even if the thing we’re judging is unrelated to what we smell or taste.
What I’m Reading (Short) –
I’m not going to mention her parents here, or where she goes to school, because I want to focus on the fact that college freshman Violet Affleck has written the most brilliant article about Covid, masking, mutual aid organizations, and the environment, and you should absolutely read it. In fact, since you likely have your reservations about trusting anyone in any ostensibly responsible policy-making role at this point, you’ll be better off seeing how a teenager synthesizes publicly verified facts to craft a cogent, matter-of-fact case for your health and community.
Here are two out of the first three paragraphs from A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles: “The structural dimension of the climate crisis, ‘like COVID,’ will soon become impossible for even society’s most insulated to ignore. Hopefully, most of us understand the climate crisis better than my little brother – we know, for instance, that it’s existential and accelerating, meaning the danger to places like LA will only increase as the planet heats. And we know that it’s anthropogenic, driven by unsustainable consumption patterns concentrated among the wealthiest citizens of the wealthiest countries, all of which have already subjected most of this country and the world to deadly temperatures, fire-flood cycles, rising seas, and dying crops. But our bewildered response to crises like the LA fires tell us we may still be accustomed to addressing the climate crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic: as a question of how fast we can get back around to pretending like the problem is gone.
After all, the promised end to the pandemic has been more a matter of public relations than public health. The idea that a vaccinated society could ‘return to normal’ was predicated on scientists’ hope – since disproven – that vaccination would prevent infection and transmission. As a result, the public health officials responsible for transitioning this country ‘out of the pandemic’ were forced to contend with ongoing waves of infection. The combination —- of public impatience, widely circulated misinformation about the nature of COVID’s spread, and corporate influence over institutional public health – meant that, rather than mitigate ongoing risk by demanding comprehensive clean-air infrastructure and accessible healthcare, our leaders announced disabled and chronically ill people would have to ‘fall by the wayside.’ Today, weekly COVID deaths continue to reach the thousands during semiannual ‘waves,’ and infection rates simmer at the ‘high’ and ‘very high’ levels that inspired widespread mitigations up to 2022.”
Quote I’m pondering —
There are also always those burnt, hard kernels at the bottom that don't pop. You know why they don't pop? They don't pop because they have integrity.
– Marc Maron
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Best,
David
HEY, YOU MADE IT TO THE FINISH!!! CONGRATULATIONS AND THANKS FOR READING.
Top Banner Credit: The cover of the 1865 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Public domain.
