Advice to Teachers and School Leaders About Tech and AI from 1969 That Is Still Sound Today

There was an educational technologist who provided sound wisdom about AI and all technology in 1969.

Anthony Oettinger, who was a Harvard researcher, acknowledged in his 1969 book “Run, Computer, Run: The Mythology of Educational Innovation,” that instructional technology could lead to improvements in education.

But…he also provided some words of wisdom that Ed techies have forgotten.

He cautioned that instructional technology can’t be “force-fed, oversold, and prematurely applied.

Ed Tech has never taken that advice and plunged into implementation with every new wave of technology that arrives. Perhaps that’s just another reason that the allure of screenbans is so strong today.

With every new technology since the PC, school leaders and ed tech advocates jump to force-feeding those new technologies through “strategic implementation plans” and “forced professional development” without ever taking the time to critically examine those technologies’ places in schooling, teaching and learning.

Then, school leaders and ed techies move to engaging in the very “oversales” tactics that Oettinger warned about. Propagandistic presentations and sales language like “gamechanger, disruptive, and transformative” are the go-to words in this over-selling tactics before anyone has even really been able to explore the technology. Implementation is treated like a “marketing problem” and not whether the technology is actually useful.

Finally, school leaders and ed techies prematurely apply the technologies in widespread fashion. School leaders want to boast about their schools being 1-to-1 schools, AI schools. Ed Tech consultants want to boast about the number of keynote speeches they’ve made and the hours of PD conducted. This happened with earlier tech and it is happening again with AI. The over-selling has generated the hype without really giving teachers and students and researchers time to examine the technology.

Ed Tech has immediately jumped to the search for proof that they were right about AI’s transformative power without giving the technology any time to develop.

Ed Tech’s problem is that it has never encountered a technology that was NOT disruptive, transformative, or a gamechanger. By default, anything silicon-based that comes along fits the bill.

Ed Tech is more into selling technology instead of critically and methodically examining as well as exploring possibilities.

I end with three things offered as advice to school leaders and teachers that captures Oettinger’s 1969 advice:

-Don’t force-feed the tech through strategic implementation plans and mandated PD. Allow time for small-scale experimentation and even resistance if it arises.

-Don’t oversell or even feel like you have to sell a technology. If the technology is miraculous, it will demonstrate this. If it has no promise then it will show this too.

-Finally, don’t engage in premature application ever! Tech options like AI hasn’t been around long enough to be the salvation of education. Don’t talk implementation. Instead talk about experimentation and exploration. Give the tech time to prove itself.

Oettinger’s advice is not antiquated, but that’s how sound wisdom often is, if we don’t allow the glare and glitter of new technologies blind us.

Why Educators and School Leaders Should Be Skeptical with Anthropic's Free AI Access Offer and How to Protect Their Schools

Let’s call Anthropic’s “free” AI access offer for what it is…an effort to get teachers and schools hooked on their product like a drug pusher standing on the curb offering free trial samples. Well, maybe not, but it feels like it.

Obviously, once teachers have invested a great deal of time and data in the product, Anthropic is in total control. They control the technology-user relationship; they control the price; and they control the conditions of use. Schools and educators are in some ways really selling their educator souls!

The notion of being skeptical of anything offered for “free” applies here. Nothing is ever free for long. Absolutely nothing is free.

Anthropic is simply deferring that cost for later. School districts and educators who elect to partake will pay later for their “free” use.

Before having anything to do with Anthropic, I would consider this “free” offer carefully and anticipate expected costs once the system is hooked.

Also, educators and school leaders should demand answers to the following questions before even setting up an educator account:

1) How much can I expect to pay in the future for your product? I need to plan for anticipated costs before a commitment.

2) What happens to all the data that we invest in using your product? Will it be used for training models? Can we have a hard-clad contracted assurance that prevents this in the future?

3) You make no promises about being serious about student and teacher data security beyond quoting something about FERPA, to which you are NOT LEGALLY BOUND. So, what are you going to do to protect our data?

Those are the big questions school leaders should ask before taking Anthropic up on their “free” offer. Though I would say no thanks even before asking them.

Otherwise, school leaders should make sure they protect students’ data and school data by forbidding the upload by anyone in their districts to Anthropic’s product until answers are provided.

My ultimate fear is this is the usual Big Tech and Ed Tech sales tactic.

Get users invested and hooked first. Then you have total control of your users, both their access and price.

That’s not a wise way for school leaders to protect their students, staffs, and school resources. It is extremely short-sighted leadership and non-visionary.

That’s signing a blank check to Anthropic.

Stay away from Silicon Valley companies bearing gifts. It’s not a gift and it’s NOT FREE.

There Is Some Acceptable Logic with Screen Bans That Needs to Be Considered

Devices that have become common in our classrooms have a design problem that Ed Tech does not acknowledge. 

These screen devices and their apps have been in some instances engineered to be habit-forming. In other words, addictive characteristics have been designed into these applications and devices.

Technology companies have become experts at designing and engineering for habit-forming and addiction in their products. Big Tech companies like Meta and Tic Tok, just to start with a few, are experts in “hooking” users on their products.

I am currently re-reading Nir Eyal’s book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. This book is a textbook for addiction engineers. It describes how tech companies have pulled off engineered addiction with their screen-based products.

In fact, Eyal’s book, Hooked, is a how to book on how to make products addictive.

Once engineers have users “hooked” like drug pushers, they have customers who have been mind-manipulated to being endless users. Like drug users, they find it difficult to put down the drug. They will fight to protect both the product and the habit.

Eyal promotes what he calls “the Hooked Model” to addict users to products. 

This involves using four steps to achieve addiction:

1) Triggering initial user behavior;

2) Engaging user in an action;

3) Dispensing a variable reward to keep users coming back;

4) Getting the user to invest time, data, effort, social capital and money.

According to Eyal, subjecting potential customers to this “Hooked” strategy works. You have users addicted to your product. While this model might be simplified, it does capture  features in screen products we encounter on our devices.

He also calls his method of engineering addiction “a Superpower.”

I call it malicious manipulation of humanity for profit. Is there no consideration that such tactics at mind-manipulation are unethical?

Tech companies and others engage relentlessly in engineered addiction because it works. But there is something extremely immoral about the whole thing. The idea that you can design a habit-forming, engineered addictive product and celebrate it as a superpower is problematic. 

Teaching students and all educators how to recognize when such tactics are employed is vital. This is clearly a subject for any digital literacy efforts.

Is it any wonder why tech companies and Ed Tech are so upset about screen bans?

Screen bans nuke this engineered addiction model before it gets its talons into users’ minds.

If users regain control over when and how a device is used, then the game is up.

Using AI Is a Choice Not an Imperative: Knowing Why One Uses It or Not Is Important

If you examine closely any of the AI promotional posts here on LinkedIn or elsewhere, and the avalanche of AI educational books out of bookstores, one thing about AI and all this promotional hype becomes clear:

They are using AI to search for a problem to solve.

Why else do so many AI-promotional posts on LinkedIn begin with the words, “AI is not he problem, (Insert whatever is the problem) is the problem”? That is a dead give-away that the search is underway for a problem that Silicon Valley’s latest shiny toy can solve.

But, what if in my role as teacher, I am perfectly able to resolve my problems with tools already in my toolbox, or with cheap, non-technological solutions? 

Why should I use AI  when asking a friend for feedback on an email works? Do I use AI just to be able to say I used AI? That sounds like I am being faddish, not economical.

Why do I need to turn to technology for solutions as all of Ed Tech does?

Take writing. It can be done very effectively without technology at all. This writing, like all my writing, begins its existence as handwriting done with a pen on a page of paper. The pen and paper are perfect tools for writing. That’s what they were made for. Simple, useful tools for writing.

Writer Wendell Berry once wrote:

“If you are already solving your problem with the equipment  you have—a pencil, say—why solve it with something more expensive and more damaging? If you don’t have a problem, why pay for a solution? If you love the freedom and elegance of simple tools, why encumber yourself with something complicated?”

That’s it. That is the question at the heart about why I choose not to use AI tools. I already have tools to solve my problems. I choose not to use AI which is damaging the environment, a strain on natural resources, and has been created through human exploitation. It is clearly complicated.

I also love the “freedom and elegance of simple tools” that do not “encumber” me with the “complicated.” I can write anywhere with pen and paper. No need to connect to the internet or a power source. 

I write, I teach, I work fine with the tools I have. I have no need for an anthropomorphized, word-prediction algorithm to assist in what I do. I do not want to complicate what I do with technology just because it exists.

Right now, there are an awful lot of people whose future is staked on AI trying to convince the world that it can solve problems. They desperately search for problems it can solve. Their golden ticket demands it. Their every word is an exercise in searching for a solution for AI to solve.

Like Berry though, I relish the freedom and elegance of the simple tools. Perhaps that really should be the guiding force in Ed Tech: Look to the simple tools first. Instead of trying to justify the existence of a technology, really look for any solutions to solve problems.

As I live and work, why should I choose to enchain myself with the chains of complication wrought through using AI? There’s a reason why the old adage, “Keep it simple stupid!” is so well-worn.

What Is It with App and Software Developers? Offer a Garbage Product and Make Users Pay a Ransom to Get a Better Product? What Nonsense!

I deleted another app that has been on my Mac for well over 10 years. It is increasingly the story from software and app developers: They are arrogant and often could care less about what their customers actually want.

They start by offering a basically limited functional product and make customers pay for the features they need through additional costs in subscriptions. And in those subscriptions, they also make them pay for bloated features they did not want in the first place.

This arrogance is absolutely amazing! They really think they know better what their users want than their users.

What's more, they offer an initial garbage product, and force RANSOM PAYMENTS for those features the users want in the first place.

You can bet if the app offers a subscription model, they are probably engaging in this practice.

I have deleted two apps that I used for over ten years in recent days for this very reason. 

It seems Tech companies aren't about offering customers solutions anymore: They are about focusing on squeezing as much money out of customers possible through crappy products that can only be less crappy with more money.

When It Comes to AI and Screen Ban Arguments, School Leaders Shouldn't Accept the "It's-Just-a-Tool Argument": You Owe Your Students Much More

What should a school leader think about the brouhaha about screens and screen bans? One thing for sure, they should not allow Ed Tech and tech advocates justify them by using the “it’s just a tool argument.” That is just not true.

In education, the screen/device/app can be the problem. This is because it is much, much more than simply a “tool.” It is designed also for the purposes of those peddling it. 

Tech companies first and foremost have to have users, so in their design, they have to maximize user engagement. Once they have users, they want the users using their product. That’s attention capture.

None of this is a problem, except when getting users always engaged with your product is the main goal and other purposes take a back seat. Then, all design choices are not about utility; they become more about how eyeballs can be captured. That’s where addiction becomes the goal.

The metric becomes the amount of time the user is using the screen/device/app.

That’s where addictive tech design happens, and the screen/device/app becomes more than “just a tool.” It then becomes a distraction from other important aspects of life. Users spend inordinate amounts of time as users, and their behavior starts resembling drug addiction.

That’s what school leaders should be concerned about: the addictive design of screens/devices/apps and banning products or limiting student access to them becomes justified.

The school leaders responsibility lies, not with providing users for companies and eyeballs for their products, but with advocating and protecting their students from device purposes and designs that are not in their students’ best interests.

School leaders should not just dismiss the screen ban as something harmful for their students. They should embrace its discussion as a means to critically question all Ed Tech currently being used in their schools.

Perhaps school leaders should even engage in a Ed Tech audit in their schools by carefully and critically examining each and every screen/device/app in the building. 

-Look at the costs. 

-Assess the results and outcomes of use. 

-Examine each for addictive design features. 

-Carefully study how teachers, students, and staff are using them.

In the end, what school leaders should want to “ban” from their schools are two things: 

1) Uncritical acceptance of all technological solutions. Do extensive homework on your own and do not always rely on what Ed Tech vendors tell you.

2) Screens/Devices/Apps that are more interested in capturing users and attention instead of providing a product that works.

School leaders are in a position to take control of the screen ban efforts by using it to critically purge tech that is not in the interests of their students, and they can make sure companies are more interested in providing learning and teaching tools than addiction machines.

When a School Leader and Teacher Is Guilty of Delivering Student Eyeballs to Ed Tech Companies, That Is a Problem

As an educational leader who eagerly supported bring-your-own-device policies, one-to-one programs, and cell phones in the classroom, I am experiencing guilt.

Why? Because I am afraid that I was part of the Ed Tech trend that mistook the qualities of “engineered addiction” in these devices for “engagement.”

Like many educators, I witnessed the eagerness with which students took up these devices and appeared to use them in the classroom. In fact, they did do some amazing things. I remember many student-created videos that were phenomenal.

Yet, after 2010, I was not aware that one of the big reasons for that eagerness was due to Big Tech purposefully engineering these devices and their apps to capture attention.

In the mid 1990s, when I was the first teacher in my school building to use the internet in instruction, things were quite different. Those were pre-Big Tech days, before the Great Transformation of the web into the commercial garbage dump it is today.

In those days, the internet was not yet a place where the race to capture eyeballs was the goal. No engineered addiction, no commerce-driven sites, and no social media division existed. It was truly a place where information was shared. Connections could be made.

There seemed to be true promise with this internet. My students could use it to connect with the world outside the small town where their school was located. The technology at that time was unmediated by tech companies whose purpose was capture attention for profit.

That web was truly a tool for connection to information and the wider world.

Over time, you know the story. Things changed. But, into the 2000s I still believed in the promise of technology and that the more we got it into the hands of students, the more they could learn and accomplish. With our educational guidance, they could do wonders.

I started to be wrong, because gradually, tech companies began engineering addiction into their platforms. Their goals to provide information and connect became secondary to making money, so attention capture was most important. The products they designed were at odds with how we wanted students to use these technologies.

More and more of my students were starting to show symptoms of “screen-glaze” and it became more and more of a battle to pry their eyeballs loose from the devices.

I thought for a while that kids were kids and it was a simple matter of redirecting students as teachers often had to do with baseball cards, books, and toys. 

But this started to be different when I began to notice an increased hostility and anger when trying to redirect a student from their devices. They fought, and some even accepted suspension for a day or two instead of giving up their device. It was like asking an addict to give up a drug.

Today, Big Tech and Ed Tech has only improved their eyeball capture and addictive technologies. Their goals and incentives are engaging students in USING THEIR PRODUCT first and foremost. That is at the heart of the issue with ed tech in the classroom. That is one reason why there is starting to be demands for screen-time limits.

This is nostalgic and impossible, but if the internet were somehow back in the business of information provider and connector, it would be a better place. The early internet was limited and did not have all the bells and whistles of today, but the problem just might be the bells and whistles in the first place.

When the race to add features and eyeglaze to tech products becomes the goal instead of the original purpose, the tech companies are part of the problem.

In Your Work, Your Leadership, Are You an Exploiter or Nurturer? Your Life, Livelihood Makes It Clear

When it comes to your leadership, your livelihood activity, are you an “exploiter” or a “nurturer”?

In his essay “The Unsettling of America” Wendell Berry writes about these two “kinds of mind” and thinking about them in terms of our current culture of technological and economic obsession is interesting. According to Berry:

Exploiters are specialists, experts. The nurturer is not. They acknowledge their limited knowing.

The exploiter’s standard is efficiency. The nurturer’s standard is care.

The exploiter’s goal is money, profit. The nurturer’s goal is health—the land’s, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s.

Exploiters ask how quickly and how much can the land be made to produce; nurturers ask what is the land’s capacity? How much can it be asked to do without diminishing it?

Exploiters want to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer wants to work as well as possible. For them, efficiency can be sacrificed for good.

The exploiter believes in organization, establishment; the nurturer has faith in human order.

The exploiter serves institutions, organization; the nurturer serves the land, household, community, place.

The exploiter thinks of numbers, quantities, hard facts; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

Which describes the current EdTech industry and consulting industry? Which captures Big Tech today?

I think it is clear where the AI industry falls here, especially in light of their Data Center projects and the obsession with efficiency. Big tech is more exploiter than nurturer.

Exploiters care more about things and worship efficiency at all costs. Sound familiar? Nurturers care more about life, humanity, people, and well-being.

Your “kind of mind” is betrayed by you you engage in your livelihood and that which you do and advocate for. 

School Leadership Mistake in the 2000s? Evaluating Teachers in Teaching with Technology

The mistake made in 2000s was a school leadership-driven imposition of technology on teachers. 

The mistake was requiring teachers to “demonstrate that they were teaching with technology” in the doctrinally-dictated manner prescribed by EdTech and their so-called experts.

Technology should never have been imposed upon teachers.

It should have never appeared any where in standards for teacher evaluations.

School administrators should have never engaged in so-called policing operations called “classroom walk-throughs” in order to ensure compliance with so-called “teaching with technology.”

This is because technology is simply a tool. The teacher and students should be in charge of whether or not that tool is used.

Technology use by teachers or students should never be a standard or an outcome; it simply should be there if the teacher chooses to use it, and if it is needed.

By imposing technology on teachers and students, perhaps that is why we are now in the era of screen-bans. This is because the emphasis in the 2000s was not teaching and learning or even curriculum, even though the EdTech boosters said it was. It was technology.

The emphasis in the 2000s by EdTech and over-enthusiastic school leaders was THE TECHNOLOGY. It was placed central to learning, and now we know that was the mistake. That’s why there are pressures to take away the tech toys.

Now, AI boosters and educators trying to make a living and careers on a new technology are making the EXACT SAME MISTAKE.

They are putting their shiny new toy, artificial intelligence, ahead of students, ahead of teachers, ahead of curriculum.

These individuals are dumping curriculum and sacrificing everything just to get this new technology an exalted place in the educational institutions.

The end result will be that in 10 to 20 years, we once again will have sacrificed everything in education to exalt another technology.

The sensible thing for school leaders at this point is not to jump on the AI bandwagon fad with both feet. The sensible thing is demand all these individuals to back off.

There is no place in teaching standards, learning standards, or any educational standards for anything AI. Teaching AI is shortsighted and plain educational malpractice.

It is just a tool, that’s it. If it has a legitimate use in education, educators will use it.

If we impose AI on educators, on students, and on curriculum, it will simply be a checkbox, a hoop to jump through, and any use of the technology will be inauthentic and bizarre.

For school leaders, there’s no need to elevate a technology to a place beyond an item in the teaching and learning tool list.

Students Form Luddite Clubs in Opposition to "Screen-Centered Lives": Signs of Students Critical Thinking

Interesting. According to the podcast below, students form "Luddite Clubs" in opposition to "screen-centered" lives. I like it.

Time will tell whether this is something that catches on, but there is some important truths to think about.

We have allowed "screens" central places in our lives. We have placed them as indispensable and at the center of our educational institutions. We have even come to allow them now to act as companions, partners, and advice-givers in the age of AI. 

It's actions like the forming of these Clubs that should make all of us question the central place we have granted these technologies in our lives, and I would add our undying and misplaced faith in what they can do for us.

The question all this makes us ask: "Are we being used by our tools or are we actually using our tools?" The answer is fairly clear without being said.

As educators do we dare support these kinds of clubs? I think we must, for this shows the promise that students are capable of critically thinking for themselves.

https://www.thenation.com/podcast/archive/twsu-022526/

Beyond the AI Hype and AI Boosterism in Education: Teaching Students How Live with Technologies Instead of Being Passive Users

There is one important notion to include in digital literacy and efforts to teach students responsibility with new technologies? 

Not how to be consumers of that technology, but how to critically examine it and the consequences of its use. To know what it does to the environment; what it possibly does to people, the economy, and possibly the mind

That flies in the face of the AI Hype and AI boosterism, which wants to jump right in and have students become users.  Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes! to use an old cliche.

Historically, the use of all new technologies has consequences. Have we not learned anything from our uncritical act of shoving screens in front of students and pushing their engagement with social media platforms? Now, after the damage, we are now learning that there are consequences.

In his book, "Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI," Yuval Noah Harari writes:

"Unfortunately, a closer look at history reveals that the Luddites were not entirely wrong and that we actually have very good reasons to fear powerful new technologies. Even if in the end the positives of these technologies outweigh their negatives, getting to that happy ending usually involves a lot of trials and tribulations. Novel technology often leads to historical disasters, not because the technology is inherently bad, but BECAUSE IT TAKES TIME FOR HUMANS TO LEARN HOW TO USE IT WISELY."

And we have AI educational boosters and consultants declaring that the happy ending has been reached: "AI is transforming education" they say. It is a "gamechanger."

But correct me if I am wrong, generative AI and LLMs have only been widely available for what, four years, if one is generous? How can technology be declared a success when it has only been around such a short time? I even heard one AI booster use the words “longitudinal study” in justification for AI. How in the world can one claim a “longitudinal” study has been done in less than four years? 

The problem with all this AI boosterism from companies and consultants is that they are not in it for the long term. They want to make their money and careers and get out, or move on to the next new thing. And we are to trust these people with an eye only on the short term with entire lives of students? 

Sadly, digital literacy is often not about teaching students how to be discerning and critical users of technology; instead, its about the simple manufacture of users for the benefit of industry. Who cares what the long term impacts on the lives of students? Get them using it now, is the thinking.

The aspect that is often missing in all digital literacy efforts is clear. If you are going to teach students to be "literate" about technologies, then you need to wholly equip them, not turn them into passive users and consumers. Teach them ALL about the technologies and let them make the choices. 

The success of a technology is not dependent on some inherent “inevitability” or even the fact that “everybody uses it.” The success of living, as users of technologies, is based entirely on thoughtful, discerning, and critical use of all tools.

Education has no business being in the AI booster business, nor do educational leaders have any responsibilities for making sure such technologies are successful. 

Educators need to regain the long-term view of educating children they once had, beyond the current fads of whatever technology or device is being hyped today.

Educational Leaders Need to Learn Locally First, There's No Consultant and App for That

Wait! Before you spend that money on an educational consultant or “expert” consider these thoughts first.

Wendell Berry, essayist, novelist, poet, and farmer, once wrote about a problem he experienced on his property. He had wooded hillside where he wanted to pasture livestock, but there was no water source available.

He consulted an expert, then set about clearing land of trees and grading it to create a small pond on a “narrow bench.” It successfully filled with water and seemed to resolve the problem.

That fall and winter, it was extremely wet, so the hillside collapsed into the pond, completely filling it. In spite of the expert advice, he was back to square one. He says:

“The trouble was the familiar one: too much power, too little knowledge. The fault was mine.”

In other words, he did not know enough about the local, and just acted, and the result was his fault alone.

He said he got “expert” advice at the project’s outset, but he forgot something he already knew to be true:

“No expert knows everything about every place, not even everything about any place. If one’s knowledge of one’s whereabouts is insufficient, if one’s judgment is unsound, then expert advice is of little use.”

Berry hits on some very important points that educators and school leaders often forget: Experts and consultants do not know everything about your school or district no matter how many “success stories” they tell or “testimonial tales of salvation” they offer. They lack complete contextual knowledge.

They do not know your schools, your classrooms, your students, your communities, your parents, and not all of these are the same. Schools are complex places, and an “expert” or consultant bearing a formulaic solution will not always provide a solution to the problems you face.

You have no choice but work hard and get know everything locally, and that takes effort and time, sometimes months and years. And you have to be willing to learn and listen instead of acting like a physician and prescribing medicine about an illness that looks like something seen elsewhere, but is really a unique, local problem.

Once you know locally, you can then make sounder judgments regarding solutions. There is no expert that is going to be able to provide instantly successful solutions so set aside the marketing and sales hype from the thunderous consultant crowd, and listen and learn locally perpetually.

This is the hard work of education; no shortcuts allowed.

Learn locally first as much as possible before calling in the experts, and once you have called them in, know your schools, your districts, your people and your community. Then you will have the knowledge to make sound judgments about solutions and their “expert” advice.

Before Signing That New Technology Contract, Be Sure to Consider Technical Debt: It's Always There and the Salesperson Isn't Going to Tell You About It

I recently heard the term “technical debt” used in a conversation about the use of AI in software coding. It refers to “the future costs associated with relying on shortcuts or suboptimal decisions made during software development.” 

I suggest that educators and educational leaders experience a kind of “technical debt” when they adopt technologies in their classrooms and schools, and that these debts are not always considered, especially in the glitter and glow of devices that are being marketed to them. 

These educators and educational leaders can’t envision the future costs of these technologies because they suffer from the eyeglaze that accompanies these devices.

But technical debt is a real future cost when selecting ANY NEW TECHNOLOGY and educational AI solutions are no different.

What’s particularly frightening with AI, it is so novel that all of these technical debts are not known yet.

In other words, schools don’t really know how the adoption of these technologies will impact future budgets if it is to be maintained. This is especially true since companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have not yet figured out how to profit from their products. This alone, makes all future costs of GenAI to schools unknown.

School leaders would do well to be aware that any adoption of a technology on offer from an Ed Tech company as well as any other tech solutions comes with these Technical debts.

This means being vigilant and skeptical and asking questions about possible technical debt is important, even if it is currently unforeseen. 

For example, asking about the profitability of a company can be important as is the current health of that company. Will this company be around 5 years, 10 years? 

Educators need technical solutions that are not going to saddle them with technical debts that will consumer even more of the already scarce budgets. 

A complete investigation into the solution and the company offering it is vital, otherwise, schools and school districts will find themselves saddled with technical debts impossible to resolve.

Is It Me, Or Are Some AI Advocates and Trainers Sounding Like Revival Preachers? Its a Tool Not the Foundation for a Ed Tech Religion!

Has anyone else noticed how the educational AI promotional movement has become like a religious revival movement? And, that it is being heavily promoted by those like AI companies, Ed Tech consultants, and even educators who stand to gain billions of dollars and professional recognition because of it?

I recently saw a LinkedIn post, “the official AI Promo Echo Chamber,” where an ISTE AI trainer and consultant actually boasted like he was in a old time tent revival meeting: “I have set out to train EVERY K-12 TEACHER AND COLLEGE FACULTY MEMBER IN THE COUNTRY ON USING AI TO TRANSFORM TEACHING AND LEARNING.”

Pardon my thoughts here, but that sounds like a “fanatic on a mission” not some individual who is thoughtful and measured about AI and its uses. His mission is not to thoughtfully explore the possibilities of AI; it appears his mission is to ram down the throats of educators everywhere his beliefs in the transformative powers of AI technology.

We’ve been here before where Ed Tech advocates boasted about the so-called “transformative power” of technologies, but usually the only thing that gets transformed are the wallets of those selling and consulting for these technologies and the slim budgets of schools scrambling for ways to pay for them.

This ISTE AI trainer and promotional evangelist also boasted about “standing on the stage at Google’s headquarters” training the first cohort of new converts. I can’t even begin to suggest how nefarious this is, for you have a Big Tech company poised to siphon billions more from K-12 to college education than they have already done with their Google Apps and Chromebooks. At the heart, this seems like an AI fundamentalist, evangelistic effort. That is the Ed Tech way in the 21st century.

The problem with AI efforts in education right now is that it is being promoted as “transformative” when Generative AI in its currrent form has only been around for around 4 years. It hasn’t been around long enough to even determine what its long-term consequences might be much less transform anything.

The AI implementation efforts right now, which is clear from the ISTE AI revivalist preacher, is not a thoughtful, careful, and critical examination of AI as a tool; it is “a gospel of salvation wrought through the technological marvels of artificial intelligence.”

These evangelists aren’t interested in training criticial users. Instead, they seem to want to convert the entire educational establishment on behalf of AI companies who are bankrolling the entire movement.

These AI movements have the slight flavor of totalitarian, fundamentalist movements, and “AI zealots” are set out to convert the masses on its saving possibilities even before there is any established research.

And what’s worse, they are engaging in misformation like the notion that AI has been around for years, as stated by one AI promoter, which is not entirely the truth. AI has been around at the edges of our applications, but generative AI is only a more recent development. Those preaching for conversion even sometimes use half truths and even false statements all in the service of gaining converts.

It’s time for educators everywhere to be thoughtful and critical of those who are leading this AI movement. Instead of allowing them to make boasts about the “transformative” possibilities of their favorite technology, its time to question them. During their “training” sessions, when they make claims, ask them to support those claims. Question their evidence. You might even question their affiliations with tech companies and organizations and their sponsors. That certainly can explain their presence.

When a movement like this gains some religious flavors, concerned educators should be skeptical. They should question everything. They should be concerned about what this technology might do to students and even our society years down the road. Most of all, they need to call out this inevitability narrative. 

After all, as historian Yuval Noah Harari writes in his book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI: “Technology only creates new opportunities; it is up to us to decide which ones to pursue.” 

It is up to us, all educators, parents, school leaders to decide on which AI opportunities we should pursue. We should not leave that choice to those like Google and their paid consultants and revivialist preachers to make that decision for us.

An Important Component of AI Literacy and Digital Literacy: Teaching Students to Be Critical Users and Not Just How to Work With Technology

Are you educating students to use AI or are you educating students to work with AI? How you approach AI and all technology with your students in the classroom matters.

Educating students to use AI places the technology in “tool” or “utilitarian” status. The tool is subordinate to the user. The user is in control. She decides when, where, why, and how to use the technology. The user controls the technology entirely.

In opposition, educating students to “work with AI” places the technology in equal or dominate status. It is not placed in tool status at all. Instead, the technology enjoys the status of  co-worker and sometimes even supervisor or manager. The student is placed in a partnership relationship or an subordinate relationship to the technology. The student does not have full control of the when, where, why, and how of the technology’s use. He must accept the presence of the technology as an inevitable part of life and even possibly submit to its decision-making and direction. (Is it any wonder why Big Tech wants us to teach this relationship?)

When Ed Tech uses the phrase “Educate students to use AI” or “Educate students to work with AI” it defines the students’ relationships to the technology, so deliberate thought is needed in the way the technology can be empowering to the student, or it can enslave the student. Educators must be deliberate and vigilant in their approaches.

We should be educating students to be potential and critical users of AI, with special emphasis on the critical. We should never teach students to be co-workers or submissive to the technology. Students should be taught that AI and technology has political and other consequences when it is used, not passive acceptance of its use. There are times when AI should not be used, and that should be part of the instruction.

If we want students to be free users of AI we should place students in total control of the technology, not teach them to be passive, submissive users, and this is done by educating them to be critical users not simply users.

Screen Time Bans and Limits Are Really A Search for a Healthy Relationship to Technology

Those who are asking for screen-time limits are people who seek to relieve children from what writer Paul Kingsnorth calls "the eye-glaze of screen burn."

It is a quest for a healthy relationship to technology instead of the almost worshipful stance currently held by so many in Ed Tech.

A healthy relationship to technology is one where all the world, digital to analog, is in the toolbox.

A healthy relationship to technology is not an endless quest to elevate it to the "go-to solution."

A health relationship to technology is the recognition and acknowledgment that even though technology might be used, sometimes it does not have to be nor should it.

A healthy relationship to technology is valuing the human over the Machine always.

Finally, a healthy relationship to technology is one where devices are not a constant intrusion and distraction; they are simply a toaster sitting in the background and used when needed  and not a device constantly beeping like a little child, demanding our attention.

Screen time limits and bans have arisen because of the excesses of a Ed Tech discipline and industry agenda that so desperately wants devices on every desk, in every hand and used during every lesson.

It is time to remove the glitter, gleam and dazzle from devices and treat them as we have microwaves, clocks, watches and power saws: as simply tools.

A New EdTech Definition of a Chatbot

 Definition of a Chatbot:

A cheap way for a company to pretend to care for their customers without really caring at all.

Can also be utilized to replace human tutors when humans are too cheap to pay a real person who cares to tutor.

Also, still another way for EdTech companies to squeeze even more money out of already scarce education budgets.

The Arrogance of Silicon Valley and Big Tech Is Harming Us All

I had my Google Search set up to avoid using the "AI Overview" and after the browser updated it eliminated that option.

This is clearly how Big Tech and Silicon Valley are going to make "AI Inevitable." 

They are going to force it down users' throats.

The AI Overview in Google can't be trusted to be correct and it does not provide access to the sources it uses.

For now, I will simply switch my default search to another search engine.

We are now in an era when Silicon Valley CEOs and Tech Companies think they know better than we do what we want in our tech products. 

Tech companies want to dictate our products. A consumer backlash is starting, and it will be more powerful that simple "Boos at Graduations" too.

When AI Is Said to Be "Here to Stay" It is Perfectly Right to Question the Fictional Narrative

 “AI is here and not going away,” is repeated by every Ed Tech and AI consultant as if it were gospel when speaking about AI’s inevitability. But is it?

That statement is a prediction and not a fact. It can’t be proven. Those who present it as fact have no evidence to point to. They might point to some data that says many students or teachers are using it now, but present use is not evidence of future use, not can it be. To say that “all students are using it” or even “many teachers are using it” is already false, because that is most certainly not possible.

This “prediction” is actually an convenient fiction employed by individuals who have a selfish interest in making it true. Their status, both financial and professional is dependent upon it.

The purpose of this inevitability fictional narrative is to immediately disarm any objections and criticism that an educator, parent, student and educational leader might have about AI and its claimed promises. AI consultants and marketers want to immediately remove any room for criticism, so they use inevitability fiction to counter any criticism.

The second purpose of this “inevitability story” is to absolve their own conscience of any moral questions about its use. Afterall, if it is inevitable, you can’t do anything about it, so accept it. This is the power play here. If an educator has concerns or objections about its use, these are placed out of bounds by the fictional story of inevitability. Just use it!

This inevitability story also absolves AI peddlers’ conscience of any ethical and morality questions about AI. For example, the fact that AI was developed from the theft and use of copyrighted works is ignored. The fact that the infrastructure needed to operate AI is consuming mass amounts of scarce resources and competing with individuals for those resources is dismissed by this inevitability fiction. The fact that AI companies exploited labor in foreign countries badly in training their language models is immediately dismissed.

Every time an educational technologist or AI consultant makes the inevitability tactical move, it immediately needs to be called out for its fictionality. At conferences, during PD, and in writing, thoughtful educators and school leaders need to immediately question these statements and ask for proof, along with proof of any other broad sweeping fictional statements about AI. When a claim is made about AI, ask for proof, and don’t accept as proof a study done by a company or organization that has a self-interest in making AI successful.

AI Detectors Are as Morally Wrong as the Cheating Done by Students Who Submit AI-Generated Work as Their Own

For me, using AI detectors to determine whether a student forged an assignment using Generative AI tools is morally wrong. 

I agree with Carissa Veliz, who writes in her book “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI”:

“A predictive approach to ethics is likewise inadequate for matters of justice, inside and outside the courtroom. In criminal contexts, merely statistical evidence isn’t enough.”

Because AI detectors use statistics and probability to predict whether a student’s work is AI generated or not, it alone should never be used as the sole evidence for making the determination on whether the student cheated and turned in AI work as their own. This probability of having AI generated material has room for error, and when it comes to dispensing justice, it is inadequate for me. I would not use it alone for detecting whether a student engaged in this unethical behavior. 

In some ways it would seem to me to be akin to the lie detector, which attempts to detect patterns of truthfulness and untruthfulness but can’t tell you whether a person is being deceptive about a specific instance.

Do we then just accept the student’s work as is? Unless we can find some causal evidence, not probable evidence, I think we have little choice, but we can devise ways to ask the student to defend their work and ensure they have invested their experience fully in the learning.

Still, to me the greater problem is that the student chose to cheat to begin with. It is a moral and a trust issue. It is a symptom of a character concern in that student that they would resort to such action, and from a societal standpoint, that should be of equal concern, that a student would choose that course of action to begin with.

What seems like a better course of action rather than simply accusing the student of cheating based on a technology, would be to devise a way that the student must defend their work, without assistance. 

For example, it could be a panel of teachers asking questions designed to ensure that the student was knowledgeable about their work. Criteria could be determined ahead of time that outlines what a successful defense of the work looks like, and the final assessment on the student’s work would be based on that alone.

Ultimately though, we still should acknowledge the moral problem underlying this, which is the same problem that has been beneath cheating since students have been subjected to instruction, which is that a student would deceptively choose to cheat to begin with. AI cheating is in some ways just another high tech cheating tactic.

The solution in this case, is not more technology, though educators, being the tech-solutionists they are, always seem to turn to tech for answers. 

Tech companies love it, because they can sell us a tech that causes a problem, then turn around and sell us another technology to solve that problem, and then another tech to solve that tech’s problem and so on. 

AI detectors are not the answer.

Instead, the answer lies in working toward the goal of helping students become ethically averse to cheating to begin with through moral instruction and character development, educating them to be better than that.

Also, the answer lies in making sure the teaching and learning experience requires the student to demonstrate their learning in ways that can’t be fabricated through AI. This is not a technology problem, but an old educational problem of, “How do I ensure that students have learned?”

It's the Teacher That Matters Most in Teaching and Learning, Not Screens, Not AI...That's The Lesson Needed for School Leaders in All These Screen Ban Efforts

How can I transform teaching and learning to accommodate or integrate AI? THAT is the WRONG question.

The correct question is, if it follows that AI is actually another tool to be used in education should be: How can AI (or any tool) help teachers engage in better teaching and students engage in better learning?

The history of Ed Tech says we asked the wrong questions when the PC, Web 2.0., and social media came along. Then, we asked how can I use these tools to transform and revolutionize, rather than how can these tools be used to facilitate? To equip?

Perhaps that's why Ed Tech and the technology cheerleaders are desperately trying to defend all the technologies it has introduced in education. 

Educators are susceptible to the “glimmer of gadgets” and have been for some time. Instead of asking the facilitating question, they sometimes look to the technologies for salvation, and the result is the present. Now, with little evidence to support a dramatic revolution in teaching and learning, important critical questions are being asked about the rightful place of technologies—screens if you want to call them—in the classroom.

We know how students learn and we have a repetoire of teaching methods at our disposal, and much of the research shows that what makes learning happen is WHAT A GOOD TEACHER DOES WITH THE STUDENTS DURING THE TIME THEY ARE IN HER/HIS CLASSROOM. It is really that simple. 

Yet, instead of looking to the one single individual who has the potential impact on learning the most, we get tangled in our devices, or fanciful technologies if you will, and we forget the teacher. 

I remember the minor debate in my schooling as a student when calculators appeared, (Yes I am that old.), but I don’t recall the raging enthusiasm to transform teaching and learning through the magical powers of the Texas Instrument calculator. It was seen as simply a machine, not a mechanistic path to save education, and we used it when it was useful and did not use it when our teachers determined that it was not useful and an obstacle to what they were teaching and what we were learning.

AI, if it is simply a tool, then let’s kick the pedestal out from under it,  toss out all the hype, and lets just see if it really can help teachers teach and students learn. That has yet to be truly determined, in spite of the mad search for evidence to justify AI existence in the classroom rather than trying to see if teaching and learning improve.

And that is another issue as well, for the AI enthusiasts want their new shiny device so badly to be the salvation in the classroom, that they won’t give it time to demonstrate whether it will be useful or not. 

Generative AI has not been around for more than a few years, and every opportunist under the sun is peddling it as the answer for all our problems, especially those in education. And, if anyone expresses concerns over its issues and problems, they are bombarded with promotional hype and labels of being a Luddite.

If I were to provide some experiential advice to all educators and especially educational leaders, stop listening to the AI cheerleading, and let’s settle down and see if this new technology offers teachers anything to enhance their teaching and students anything to enhance their learning.

Stop looking to technology to transform education. Stop looking for an invention that will somehow make learning happen. We know already what will make learning happen, and that is a well-trained, experienced teacher in the classroom equipped not with the fads of the day, but with she or he says they need to educate students.

Ultimately, let’s remember this: It’s the teacher stupid, that ultimately matters, not the gadgets!

When Tech CEOs Make Predictions About AI, Remember They Are Trying to Dictate the Acceptance of Their Product

When a CEO predicts that AI will replace you, or that everyone will use AI, they are trying to get you to passively accept their future vision.

“Predictions about human beings attempt to change the future by altering what people believe and how they behave, which is why they are veiled imperatives or orders.” Philosopher Carissa Veliz “Prophecy”

Our Tech CEOs know this. They are trying to alter what people believe about AI and alter how people behave towards their product that they stand to make billions.

They want acquiescence to their vision, so their prediction is really a “veiled imperative or order.” “You will accept and adapt to my technology. It is inevitable,” is their meaning.

As Veliz points out, “When the CEO of a tech company says, ‘In the future, everyone will use AI,” he is trying to bend reality to that vision; in a way, he is saying something like ‘Go forth and get your AI before you fall behind! Go forth and fulfill my vision!”

They are dictating the future they wish to see.

Common sense says that we recognize what they are doing and force them to provide AI on our terms. 

#AI #EdTech #AIinEducation #SchoolLeadership #Leadership

Predictions About AI and the Future of Our Students Limit Their Futures and Should Be Questioned

One horrible consequence of all the AI predictions about the future jobs of students is that such predictions are anti-democratic. 

Predictions, when followed as fact, become self-fulfilling prophecies, and that’s what these CEOs from AI companies want, and they know it. Those who have the most interest in its widespread use also know this.

But the reality is, when you make a prediction that “you are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist,” you taking a shot in the dark, for no one knows that future. Instead of playing a game of job training whack-a-mole, educators should perhaps not prepare students for any jobs, since companies constantly outsource, relocate work to other countries, as well as automate.

Instead, educators should be preparing students for a world of total uncertainty, because that is one sure thing about the future. We shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think we can foresee where they will be and the jobs they will have. Prepare them for a world of uncertainty.

Carissa Veliz, in her book “Prophecy” makes this point about prediction:

“When predictions determine our fate, WE LOSE FREEDOM. DEMOCRACY NEEDS UNCERTAINTY TO THRIVE. It’s only when we don’t know the outcome of a future election that we have democracy.”

By simply giving credence to these predictions about AI and all technologies, the freedom of students is stolen, and that should never happen.

All predictions about AI should be viewed with skepticism, especially from those who have an interest in their acceptance.   Educators and school leaders have an obligation to prepare students, but not one based on these predictions.

Educate Students for Life and Just Ignore Those Who Make Predictions About the Future Job Statuses of Students

“We must prepare students for jobs that don’t exist yet,” says the AI consultant-enthusiast.

“No we don’t,” is the sanest of all replies.

As educators with common sense, what we need to do is ignore these AI consultants and Ed Tech prognosticators completely.

They have no crystal ball and can’t see into the future any better than anyone else.

Predictions are guesses. Predictions are NOT facts. Especially facts to be acted upon or to base life-impacting decisions on what we do with our students.

As philosopher Carissa Veliz writes: “An assertion about the future can be many things—an estimate, a desire, a warning—but never a fact.”

So, educators and school leaders can ignore and discard these baseless predictions about some future notion of what the job status of their students will be.

Their predictions are not substantive enough on which to base decisions about anybody’s life. To do so is severe malpractice.

And, the next time Bill Gates, Sam Altman or Jensen Huang spouts some prophecy? Take it for what it is: a prediction no better than that of a soothsayer predicting based upon his view of a pig’s entrails. They are just hyping for business.

Instead, you are an educator and smart enough to figure out AI for yourself and what place it should have in your teaching. You have to consider the long-term view when it comes to students’ lives, and AI may or may not be a part of that. Only the future knows.

Beware of the Soothesayers of Silicon Valley Who Use Algorithmic Entrails and Tea Leaves to Tell Us Our Future Lies with AI or Any Other of Their Inventions

 “Today’s ruling soothesayers are no longer astrologers, astronomers, sociologists, or even economists; they are computer scientists, data analysts, and engineers. Algorithms are the new tea leaves, animal entrails, and stars through which we hope to catch a glimpse of the future.”

from the book “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI by Carissa Veliz

I just have a picture in my mind of the Bill Gateses, Sam Altmans, and Jensen Huangs, bent over algorithmic entrails, and the entire world sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for the  these “infallible tech CEOs” to declare for us our future.

Our Soothesayers of Silicon Valley and their algorithmic tea leaves and algoritmic entrails continue each day to make self-serving and profit generating predictions for themselves.

I think we need to remember that predictions are not facts, whether you are using algorithms or pig intestines.

Educators need to be skeptical and take all that these Soothesaying CEOs and business leaders say with a grain of salt.

AI Is Not an IT Problem? It's a Leadership Problem? What Nonsense...School Leaders Need to Be More Critical of AI Consultant Claims

Recently I saw a post where an AI consultant said that "AI is not an IT problem, it's a leadership problem." What nonsense!

So now, they are going to blame the leaders of school districts for a Silicon Valley creation that:

1) steals the copyrighted work of other authors to use in their training models,  

2) in their LLM training they exploited low-wage workers in poverty-stricken parts of the world, 

3) this product can create facsimile products that can pose as the work of creators to steal their livelihoods, 

4) data centers for these products require massive amounts of power and water, often strapping the communities who have these deceptively forced upon with resource shortages, 

5) these data centers are also having noise pollution issues in the communities where they are being placed. 

6) there is growing concern about cognitive outsourcing for students and the consequences of that in children's futures.

7) Who knows what consequences that are yet to come...

So this AI consultant says, no, there's nothing wrong with AI, and that the problem is with school leaders.

The real problems with AI consultants and opportunists who are ignore the problems with this technology and already declare it as the savior of education, all for what has to be self-interest.

Added to this problem are school leaders believe such nonsense and hire these companies and consultants simply because AI has been mystified to the point that they think they can't possibly understand it. They are wrong. AI is not difficult to understand.

Isn't interesting that no matter the technology, it is flawless and causes no problems? It's always the educators, the leadership, the parents...or whatever the AI consultant can shift the blame to. It's standard sales tactics when you do not want someone to really look at the problems with a technology.

Good, solid leadership sees through all of these AI consultant sales pitches and cheerleading and acts accordingly. Be critical of all the AI Promo Rhetoric!

How to Sell Your Tech Product and Tech Consulting Business No Matter What with the Silicon Valley Marketing Strategy

Want to sell any technology to everyone and ensure its total acceptance? Here’s how:

If I invented a product that had all kinds of potential dangers and harms but still wanted to make a bundle off that product, I would do the following:

-Convince everyone that my product is here, it's inevitable, and that they might as well use it.

-Convince everyone that failure to use my product means you are behind-the-times and irrelevant.

-Convince everyone that my product was just like a previously non-harmful product like a calculator, and that it was "only a tool." You can always blame the users for harms too.

-Convince anyone that any attempts to regulate my product will stifle innovation and just allow the Chinese to beat us.

-Utilize the Ed Tech and educators to make all the children of the world into proper consumers of my product.

-Buy a political establishment that will protect my enterprise at all costs—environment and health of the people be damned. Especially buy out local governments where I need to put my massive data centers.

-Tell wild fantasies about how my product has the potential to rule the world.

-Make my product as addictive as possible, and keep individuals using it for everything. Even invent uses and convince people to use it even if it is not actually more useful of effective. Goal is to keep users in the product.

That is a blueprint for ensuring product success no matter what harms and unforeseen consequences it might have. That’s the Silicon Valley marketing plan.

AI Boo's at Graduations Might Be Called For When School Leaders Callously Allow AI Cheerleaders and CEOs Sell Their Products at Commencement Ceremonies

Boos might be called for from graduates when commencement speakers who stand to gain bundles of money from it’s adoption are invited by school leaders as speakers.

Graduations aren’t about their pet products and time for their marketing pitches; graduations should be about the graduates and their families.

Colleges and universities that get commencement speakers who sell their products should be ashamed and booed too.

School leaders should be skeptical of asking AI cheerleaders to speak at graduations. After all, we don’t allow Samsung to sell TVs are graduations.

ChatGPT: Not a Tool, But a Novelty In Search of a Legitimate Use

I am increasingly seeing the ChatGPT creations where a user asks it to generate a drawing or illustrated map of themselves with drawings indicating who they are, based on the "conversations they have been having with the chatbot."

Don't get me wrong, can anything good come from that?

I hope the "conversations" these users have been having with that chatbot has not been too intimate. Silicon Valley has a notorious reputation with what they do with individual personal data. 

Then there's the idea as to why I should care what ChatGPT has to say about me, though I will confess I am not a user, nor will I ever be. But, what credibility does a chatbot have other than what we decide to give it? It's like a bit tech "soothesayer" or horoscope with about the same level of truthfulness.

It's a machine, and it just spitting back to you what you have inputed, and some cases manufacturing that information in order to please the user. Really, it is just a more complex version of Joseph Weizenbaums' chatbot Eliza.

People are searching for ways to use GenAI, in order to give it legitimacy. They want so bad to find some usefulness for it, because it's so neat!

True tools are not like that. They are created to solve a problem, not a solution in search of a problem to solve.

School Leaders Need to Become Data Misers: Make Ed Tech Vendors Justify Every Single Bit of Data They Say They Need

 It is time for schools and school districts to get miserly with their students’ and staffs’ data. 

Don’t share it, ever, with Ed Tech companies and vendors.

If they ask for data, make them justify every single data-point requested and then evaluate their justification. 

If you deem their need for the data as unnecessary, tell them they can’t have it and need to work around it. Period.

If they say their product will not work without that data, tell them to redesign it so that they won’t need it.

School leaders need to be the ones in control of their students’ and staffs’ data, period.

Become a data miser when you work with any companies. 

Bookstore CEO Open to Selling AI-Authored Books: This Reader Not Interested

Recently, Barnes and Noble bookstore CEO says he would sell AI authored books as long as they are transparently labeled as such and if the customer demand is there. (Why CEO of Barnes and Noble Would Support Selling AI-Written Books in Stores)

That makes sense I suppose for a business. The success of AI books in this case will depend on demand. If readers value author-less books, then they can get them. Set aside my own question of why in the world would anyone want to read a book written by a machine.

I think the important thing is the disclosure and transparency regarding authorship. Personally, I am not interested in AI authored books. Part of me just can't get beyond the fact that such work would not be based on the living being's own experience of being human; it would be an assemblage of the experiences of many others and their writings. 

The greater question is whether such AI authored works, such as a novel or book of essays would sell. My purchases are usually tied to authorial reasons. For example, I choose to read a book by historian Lewis Mumford because I enjoy his work, due to the knowledge that he wrote it, it has his style, his ideas, etc.

What for me that is a deal-breaker would be works that are AI authored impersonated works. For example, I would not be interested in a work generated by AI in Lewis Mumford’s style. That to me would require the knowledge that this was not a work that the historian penned himself.

As an avid reader, the notion that bookstores have authorial “knock-offs” on their shelves would not be a place I would frequent. 

The Proper Role of Ed Tech and Educational Leaders in the AI Push into Schools

 “We as educators need to educate our students about AI,” is how Ed Tech’s latest pitch goes regarding their new project. Let’s look at what is really involved in that project.

Paul Kingnorth writes in his 2025 thought-provoking book “Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity”:

“…we need to understand the consequences of the Machine we have built, and which is now rebuilding us so that we may become more perfect consumers, shopping for individual fulfillment in its global marketplace of goods, ideas, and identities.”

The Ed Tech calls for “AI Literacy” are part of the “Machine” project that Kingsnorth describes here, the project of “rebuilding us so that we may become more perfect consumers” of AI, Silicon Valley’s latest money-maker. Big Tech, as it did with the internet, Web 2.0, social media, has once again activated our Ed Tech establishment in schools to take on the task of transforming students and teachers into proper consumers of their latest cash cow, AI.

Part of this project of Big Tech has been to short-circuit any critical thought about AI as they have made it, about its moral and ethical uses, and even whether we should accept it as presented. They did this through their “inevitability” myth, and their “everybody-is-using-it” myth, both of which are not true and does not have to be true.

They have used these myths effectively in the past, and educational technology has been acting and is currently acting as the proselytizers of Silicon Valley since it beginnings as a disciplinary field. It is a discipline that exists to carry out Big Tech’s latest proclamations, and their latest is to get all of education—students, teachers, parents—to acquiesce without protest, to being blind, perfect consumers of AI.

Educators have no business acting in this role. If anything, they should be fostering critical-thinking individualists who decide for themselves the role, if any, AI will play in their own lives and use. These students can also decide for themselves whether acceptance or resistance is called for. The next generation can demand that AI serve humanity, not those who stand to profit the most from its success.

Reflecting back on thirty-plus years in education and my own role in Ed Tech, I have seen how educators become implicated in this whole project of consumer generation. Now, we see how this blind promotion of technology has not really transformed anything for the good.

Past history tells us, that this AI consumer project will not end well in its present form either, without ensuring that our students, teachers, and parents are able to think for themselves critically about the place and form of this technology in their lives. 

We do not have to let Silicon Valley and Ed Tech decide for us.

When Your Inbox of Social Media Feed Is Flooded with AI Consultant Sales Pitches, A Bit of Skepticism Is In Order

I’ve been noticing a flood of AI consultant sales pitches on LinkedIn.

Here is one typical AI consultant's sales pitch to educational leaders: "Students are already using AI. Teachers are already using AI. Therefore, you need help and guidance on establishing control of the situation. I have consulting services to sell you." (The last sentence is mostly unsaid of course.)

First of all, set aside the false "everybody is using AI statements." They have no way of knowing that. They don't know your teachers, your students. Besides, there are certainly both students and teachers not using AI. They are using a huge generalization to try to short-circuit any objections and misgivings you might have about AI and pre-empting discussion about their generalizations. It's the classic set up to "generate a need" for their consulting services and at the same disarm any first layer objections. Call them on their “truth” and you will find no support.

Truth is, these AI consultants-sales people also want to activate within you a bit of “technological-feeling-behindness” and a dose of “inevitability.” If you are behind, something bad is going happen, and if it is inevitable, you can’t do anything about it. Once these are established, you NEED their consulting and services, and if you don’t bad things are going to happen.

Secondly my question is it really education’s job to teach AI use? If they are already using it, then it is apparent they do not need our help with that. If it is to teach everyone how to use AI correctly, then is that really the educational institution’s responsibility? Is it an educator’s job to teach students and teachers how to be “good little consumers of this product”? I think a good argument can be made that the answer is no.

I have to wonder if the real goal behind all this is forcing everyone to accept and use AI. 

Ultimately, I accept that the AI consultant is trying to sell her/his services, but  before any of a school’s very limited budget is spent on these services, remember to question the sales rhetoric and recognize when they use marketing tactics to get you to purchase those services.

There is no urgency that would facilitate the need to spend money just to say you are doing something with AI.

AI Advocates and An Automated Dreamworld: A Fictional World Once Described by Author Kurt Vonnegut

Would you like to see what the world will look like if the AI company CEOs, AI cheerleaders, along with EdTech AI evangelists get the automated world they so desperately desire?

I've been re-reading one of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novels, Player Piano written in the 1950s. In that book, you have a world where the machines have replaced all the workers, doing the "so-called work that no one really wants to do.

It is a divided world where there are machines, there are engineers and managers, and there is everyone else. The machines do all the work. The engineers design machines for every task, because there is the faith that they can always do it better. 

The managers keep the machines running and the engineers designing. The rest of the people? They take on the left over jobs, such as cleaning the streets; they become members of what is called in the “Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps” or the “Reeks and Wrecks.” They are the people for whom the automated, artificial society no longer had a place for, so they were relegated to the left-over portion of society because they “couldn’t compete with machines.” They even live separately from the machines, managers, engineers in a place called “Homestead” where they can be out of view and only interacted with when needed.

I read the book a few years ago, but now as I re-read, it seems to take on an even greater relevance in the AI arguments of today. It’s almost prophetic!

Vonnegut wrote in his Forward:

“This book is not a book about what is, but a book about what could be,” and I think it a very apt description. 

Player Piano is a book about what could be if humanity continues down a path of pursuing blind efficiency and profit at all costs, and mechanizing and automating everything including their thinking.

Player Piano is what happens when one views everything in the world as a design problem.

The problem with the vision that AI evangelists and promoters have for the future, is that it is a dreamworld, and a world where they thrive at the expense of many others. That’s world that Vonnegut captures in this novel.

There’s all this AI hype about freeing up workers so they can do more important work. But that is nonsense. That is not what will happen. History shows us this, if only they would read it. In this instance, our fiction is becoming our history.

Besides, the reality is, work does not always have to provide us with meaning; we can find meaning in our work, no matter what it is.

And then there is the dreamy idea a so-called “Universal Minimum Income.” That’s really nonsense. (Actually Vonnegut has such a feature in this society, and it does not wokr.) But it will not happen, ever, in a society such as ours. In our current society, we are constantly cutting food stamps, medicaid and all manner of services for those in need, and we expect our government is going to provide a universal income for everyone regardless of what they do? That is biggest nonsensical idea ever!

I am so glad to be revisiting the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano now, because it offers a clearer picture than ever, where this blind, religious faith in AI is going to take us. It is not a “Promise land of abundant milk and honey flowing" either.

I’m sure Vonnegut would have a big laugh at the thought of him being a prophet because that would be nonsense to him. But, his world in Player Piano and the beliefs that underpin it, are very much alive in the hearts and minds of AI dreamers. 

Booing AI-Promoting CEOs and AI Evangelists: Perfect Opportunity for True AI Literacy

When a CEO in a commencement speech tells a group of young people "To Deal with it!" over their boos about the mention of AI, these words seem to be echoes of the voices of manufacturers telling the Luddites the same thing when machines were installed to replace them in the factories of the 19th century.

This time, Big Tech, our government leaders, and Ed Tech establishment are relentlessly trying to instill into students the "inevitability" of AI and their need to quietly acquiesce to its replacing them in the workplace.

Amazingly, while so many have bought in to the inevitability myth, there are still young people who have the clarity of mind to see through the myths that have been constructed around AI specifically. 

This questioning of AI’s rightful place in our world is a perfect opportunity for educators to foster, not passive consumer sentiments over the tech, but to empower students to question, to be critical, and to be in charge of AI’s place in the future.

Undoubtedly, people like this CEO does not want that. CEOs want to the power and the ability to replace humanity at will for power and profit.

Ed Tech had an opportunity to curtail the narrative that AI is inevitable, but it chooses instead to propagate the narrative.

But that narrative is a lie. The AI that is being created is not the AI we have to accept and adapt our lives to.

Despite what the myth says, AI isn't taking over anything. What is happening, CEOs and business leaders and even educators are making the conscious decision to replace humans for the sake of their own power and profit. It is that simple. They are making a conscious, ethical decision.

Because it is  choice, made by human beings, it is also choice in how AI happens and a choice in what we allow it do. That is where AI literacy should be. We should be giving students all the knowledge and empower them with the choice.

Despite how it is spun by the AI pundits, commencement speech boos are not about fears and misunderstandings of AI; it is a sign that there are still individuals who are thinking for themselves, and that is what education should be about, not fabricating “good little consumers of AI.”

As educators, we should be arming students with critical thought that attacks the inevitability myth and other marketing myths of AI that can counter and help students decide their own future with or without AI.

There is a space yet for Luddite thinking when it comes to AI, and it is time to start booing the CEOs and prophets who are making these claims of inevitability.

What's Wrong When a CEO Says He's Replacing 'Lower Value Human' Capital with AI? What a Perfect Example of an Awful Leader

 Bill Winters, a bank CEO said during a investment leaders summit in November of 2025, that he was replacing "lower value human capital" with AI.  (StanChart CEO Seeks to Reassure Staff Over 'Lower Value Human Capital' Comment from Reuters)

Think about that statement and what it says about the leader who says it. He has little value for humanity other than that which makes him and his shareholders more money.

This is an example of the worst kind of leader, and the worst kind of human being. The lesson to be learned is this instance? Don't follow this person anywhere!

What makes this problematic for me is that during my entire career in educational leadership, university schools of administration and school systems often turned to business and corporate leaders for models on how they should lead their organizations. We were even assigned in some cases books written by "successful CEOs."

But this incident should give any school leader pause before listening to a CEO boast about their leadership skills. It should also make one question whether anything a CEO tells you about leading a their companies can help in leading a school or district.

I have always thought that business/corporate leadership and school leadership are based on entirely different value systems, and this makes the two quite different. After reading about this incident, because the CEO is so blatantly anti-human, I am more than ever convinced that anything a CEO tells you about leadership needs to be viewed with heavy criticism and skepticism. 

I realize that the CEO said his quote was taken out of context, but that does not fly with me. The use of the "LOWER VALUE HUMAN CAPITAL" cannot ever be smoothed over by reframing and damage control. It is a clear indication of where this CEO's value system is, and sadly, he shouldn't even be granted the label of leader.

Certainly not all CEOs have these values, but this story is a powerful example of bad leadership and a model of a bad leader. 

Disaster Happens When Community College Decides to Use AI at Graduation: This Is What Happens When Educators Worship AI

"Just because I can use AI to do it, does not mean I should."

In the video below, this Arizona community college failed to consider this. Its decision to have AI announce names and it skipped many graduates' names. 

This is a fantastic example of using AI to search for problems to solve, instead of using it simply as a tool.

It is what I would call a "gimmicky" use of AI.

If an educator engages in "gimmicky" use of AI, it isn't about using it as a tool; it is about trying to look fashionable, with-it. This type of use has no place in education. 

We should not be selling AI to our students; we should be teaching them to be critical users of it. Let Big Tech sell their own products.

The thinking behind this is NOT using AI to solve a problem; it's using AI to impress, to make a statement, or use AI because AI is AI.

This is an example of using AI ideologically and not because it was a tool to solve a genuinely problem.

AI, is it is ever to be useful, we need to kick it off the pedestal that Big Tech and EdTech has placed it on, and just put it in the toolbox. If it has any uses, then people will pick it up and use it.

New Must-Have Component Needed in Digital Literacy Approaches: Instruction in Screen Addiction Engineering

There should be a new component in all digital literacy efforts:

Students should be educated on the engineered addiction aspects of these devices and technologies and what they can do take away Tech's entrapment power.

They should receive training, for example, on how features such as the "Like" button were utilized to lure them to these applications and keep them there. By recognizing the manipulating factors of this feature, they can de-elevate its importance and free themselves from its tyranny.

They should be receive specific instruction about how these devices can be exploit them and manipulate them.

They should also receive instruction in how to counter this built-in addiction feature and free themselves from the lure of screens. For example, they could receive instruction on "the notification" and how it is a siren's call to return to the screen. They could learn to limit or turn off all notifications at all times or during specific periods of the day. This would eliminate one major, addictive aspect of the screen and give them control over the device.

Ed Tech should transform digital literacy from being an effort to sanitize Silicon Valley devices and transform students into "good little consumers" of these, into being empowered and critical human beings who decide for themselves when and how these intersect their lives.

This would transform the field of Ed Tech from being a cheerleader for Big Tech, into actually giving children and their parents power of these devices. 

Sadly, Ed Tech still sees its primary role as delivering new consumers to these companies.

AI Is Not Inevitable No Matter What Ed Tech Tells You

Ed Tech’s argument to educators about AI continues with the inevitability argument, a genius marketing tactic of Big Tech.

“AI is here to stay so you might as well accept it and subject students to it, after all, they are going to use it anyway,” says post after post from the Ed Tech faithful.

That’s such a poor argument on so many levels.

First of all, the here-to-stay, inevitability argument… This is Silicon Valley dogma and marketing at its best. No technology is “inevitable” but think about it. If the Tech companies get users to acquiesce without protest, they’ve won from the start! 

Sorry EdTech, we do not have to accept AI as is. We can, through our government, push for regulation and through our consumer choices, we can refuse to use their products if they are not up to our standards. Consumers always have a choice. Accepting inevitability means surrending power.

Secondly, the students-are-going-to-use-it-anyway argument… Does it really matter? Students often choose to use any number of products, and it is not education’s role to teach the proper use of these products. It is not educators’ responsibility to sanitize AI so that it is used properly either. If one follows that argument, we should be requiring gun safety for every student too, just because all students need to use guns for good purposes and not bad ones.

EdTech is so biased on the issue of AI they have become a 24-hour-a-day commercial for it. Is there not anyone with a critical thought among them?

The field of Ed Tech’s future depends on the acceptance of AI, cell phones, and all manner of gadgets, and that’s why it is a marketing arm of the Big Tech. After all, creating students who are CRITICAL USERS might mean that they can choose to not use, and that’s bad for business.

Educational leaders, parents and teachers should take all arguments about AI and cell phones, etc. coming for Ed Tech with a grain a salt. 

Educators Should NOT Teach Students How to Use Technology with a Purpose: They Should Teach

Ed Tech advocates say, "We should teach students how to use technology with a purpose."

Do we teach students how to use a pencil, an eraser, or paper with purpose?

No, we don't start with the device, then teach students the ways in which to use the device; we start with the purpose, that which needs to be taught, not the device. The device is actually only relevant in its ability to serve the purpose.

If the device does not serve the instructional purposes, acccording to the judgment of the teacher, it has no place in instruction.

We also don't sit around inventing ways to use a pencil or paper in the classroom. We use them when they suit our instructional purpose, which comes first.

Education has gotten this wrong quite often in the past. We exchange our instructional purpose for the technology to achieve that purpose and spend all our time on the technology.

Too often, Ed Tech confuses the technology as the objective and the purpose.

Education should never be about teaching how to use technology with a purpose; it should be teaching and instruction as the purpose, and the technology might or might not help in that.

Educate Students, Not Consumers and Users of AI

It is not the function of education to sanitize and transform AI into a useful tool for humanity or even businesses.

If it is a useful tool, then it will find a place in that niche.

It is fallacy to think that if schools do not somehow educate to transform AI into a "magical tool of production" they are failures. This play on an educator's conscience is an old EdTech tactic and it is reprehensible.

There is tiresome post after tiresome post from AI experts, consultants and creators, who keep making hyped claims about its future. In reality, they ARE USING THE HYPE AND THE INEVITABILITY ARGUMENT TO ENSURE THEIR FUTURE INCOME AND WELL-BEING. The wise educator will cut through and look beyond the sales tactics.

After all, if AI flops or does not measure up to expectations, they will have made their money, and they can move on to the next technological invention like they have done in the past.

I understand when one has enthusiasm for a new gadget, but one must not let the glow and glitter shine so brightly that one can't really see. And, those of us out there that are subjected to this promo-rhetoric, need to keep our wits about us and our critical thinking hats on.

Digital Literacy and Information Is Teaching Students How to Become Dumpster Rats

Information literacy is now about teaching students how to sift through a garbage dump to find what is useful.

Its teaching students the art of being dumpster rats, looking for the worthwhile amongst the trash and discarded.

Finding value in the Web has become a salvage operation.

When Educational Leaders See Employees and "Human Resources" and "Human Capital: Are You Devaluing Teachers?

What is wrong with using the terms “human resources” and “human capital” as an educational leader?

I was reflecting today on my time in “human resources” and I realized that the entire time working in that area, the word “human resouces” always caused me just a slight shiver when I heard and used it. Why?

It is actually the word “resource” that is a bit bothersome, because it refers to “any material, person, or asset that can be USED to meet a need, solve a problem, or produce something value.” In other words, the term refers to USING people for some purpose.

I suppose it is just that word “USED” that bothers me, because that word so easily slips into manipulation and exploitation. The term “human resource” also makes me think of something like “natural resources” which are extractions from nature USED AND EXPLOITED for manufacturing purposes.

So the term “resource” has always had a slightly bad smell for me.

Then why not use the term “human capital” instead? Sometime ago, our North Carolina Public Schools started labeling its work force and teachers “human capital." When I heard the monthly webinar with the state called the “Human Capital Webinar” I had that same quiver of uncomfortableness.

But the word “human capital” has a bit of stench to me as well. Why? Capital means in many ways the same thing. Capital is a broad term for “financial assets, such as money, or physical assets, like machinery and buildings, USED to produce goods, services, or generate income or value.”

So is using “human capital” any better? Not really. One still has to slightly hold the nose on the “USED” part of that meaning if one sees people for more than just a tool to be used to reach a goal. It still has that slightly off-putting smell.

But, I suppose if your intention is truly to USE people for these purposes, then these terms work well. 

Still, I can’t help but wonder how the use of the words “human resources” or “human capital” somehow deeply affects how leaders view those to whom they lead, especially school leaders. 

Words have meaning and they have power. I have always believed that, and the terms and words a leader chooses, has power over a school leader’s work.

By viewing people as “resources” or “capital” to be used and manipulated for organizational purposes seems to avoid attaching any other value for people other than how they can be used for those purposes. This means leadership is about using and manipulating people to produce, and I think too often, school leaders will resort to any tactics to achieve their purposes.

Just maybe that’s why “accountability” has become gospel to educational leaders. Educational leadership as a field has taken all it can from the world of business, including the terms “human resources” and “human capital.” Accountability in the form of test scores gives purpose, and teachers simply become the resources and capital to that end.

Using words like human resources and human capital allows the school leader in good conscious to engage in the same kinds of exploitation and manipulation tactics as business leaders sometimes engage in. It can use people for the achievement of a simply purpose: increased test scores.

Perhaps it’s all OK in the end, but I do think educational leaders need to be a bit skeptical of all these leadership concepts and philosophies that have infiltrated educational leadership as a field. 

Why? Because education is NOT just about “producing graduates” or even “producing citizens.” Narrowing education education into any single purpose or purposes limits its possibilities.

Education as a field is notorious for "relabeling" things when a term becomes fashionably and culturally unacceptable or somehow viewed negatively. For example, I still laugh to myself when I hear the word "learning cottages" to describe "mobile classrooms" or "classroom trailers." But I am not advocating a label change here, because this is not a language issue; it is a educational cultural issue and will not change by changing the "human resource" or "human capital" label. Those are only deeper symptoms of a way of thinking that sees employees as objects of exploitation for purpose. That's what should be the target for revision.

I realize that organizations are going to use the words “human resources” and “human capital.” But, I have always valued my own “slight discomfort” at the use of the terms, because it was always a reminder to me that, these terms did not have to determine how I viewed employees and that I could value them as the human beings they were too.

With the Instructure Canvas Data Breach It's Clear That Ed Institutions Either Pay Hackers Extortion Money or Pay Tech Solutionist Mob Bosses to Protect Data: The Cloud Is a Nasty Place

Do educational institutions need to rethink their use of all cloud solutions?

If educational institutions want to exist in the cloud, they seem to have to pay either extortionist hackers or pay the "Tech Mob" solutionists for protection.

With the Canvas data theft, I am convinced that all the web is perceived as a money extortion scheme by everyone.

The hackers extort money from educational institutions.

Then, educational institutions have the choice to pay the hackers or suffer their data spread everywhere.

Or, they can pay additional Mobsters, in the form of data protection solutions to keep their data safe.

What's wrong with this? Educational institutions have to pay ransom to someone regardless in order to keep their data as safe as possible.

Either way, if educational institutions choose to use any cloud solutions, they pay for the solution, then they pay for the mob protection of companies that provide security.

The web has turned into an unsavory place where one has to pay for protection. That is a problem.

Ed Tech Doesn't Need to Advocate for Technology: It Needs to Shine a Spotlight on Its Flaws Too

One key component of any Digital Literacy Program? Web content is not always there due to its merit; it's there because someone "pays for its spread" and "games the delivery algorithms."

Of course, the most astute users already know this.

But if we want truly digitally literate students, they need to know the games people play to get noticed.

They need to know that all web content, especially that disseminated on platforms, is not necessarily there due to its merit, but because it is like a paid informercial or because someone knows the algorithmic game.

As schools grapple with AI, it is important to include in literacy the games behind its creation as well. Its use of web content, including pirated copyrighted content in its development. Also, its use of exploited labor to train models, and its massive consumption of our natural resources and power.

Too often, educators get caught up in the shiny gleam of technologies as gems and fail to see that most of the time what they really have are rhinestones.

Ed Tech promotes the "gemstones" myth for all technologies.

Ed Tech Defends Devices Not Students: There Is an Attention Problem and It's Not the Screentime That's the Problem: It's the Products or Screens

Many in Ed Tech are striking back against those wanting to control screen time with bans and restrictions. They rely on the old “utilitarian argument” used by gun advocates. “Devices don’t distract students; students distract themselves” they say.

How ludicrous does that sound when the devices are PURPOSEFULLY DESIGNED AND ENGINEERED by Big Tech to “distract” and “capture attention?”

Sure, it’s not the time spent behind the screen that is the problem. Its the products that Ed Tech uncritically subject students to.

It’s devices and apps that are purposefully engineered for addiction. The product is the problem. It’s how it’s made and that is of concern.

These companies aren’t going to change their money-making products, and their goal is more and more addictive and distracting designs with each new feature.

In the classrooms, teachers are fighting “mech-dealers” (the tech-equivalent of meth dealers), who sell these addictive products and who only want students attention and data so they can make more money.

That is the problem with screens.

Instead of working with these Ed Tech companies and serving students and their attention on a silver platter,  why not join with those who want to address these issues. 

No, like Ed Tech does when their devices flop, it’s the teachers’ fault; it’s the school’s fault.

It’s an implementation problem, they say. Just maybe, the product is the problem.

Come on Ed Tech, advocate for students, not the Tech and those peddling it.

Why Abandoing E-Books Restores an Old Experience of Reading

Why do I still buy physical books? Call it reverse digital conversion.

When the Kindle appeared, I was in awe and I have purchased multiple versions over the years, and always used the app across devices. It gave me instant access to book purchases (though under Amazon terms I did not actually own the books but simply pay them for access). It also allowed me to carry a library around with me at all times (though I discovered you still can only read one book at a time.)

That awe e-books invoked has long-since cooled and I buy more physical books than I do e-books. Why?

The experience of reading a physical book for me is different and more suitable to the way I want to experience reading. 

First of all, reading from a device can bring the multitude of distractions that gadgets bring. I can read a physical book on MY TERMS, and truly block out the world. Devices are designed for distraction, so a physical book has none of that.

Secondly, I like to physically underline as I read, make notes in the margins, and I have an old-fashioned journal and pen I can pick up and record quotes and thoughts. I have never been able to get that feature in the Kindle app to work the way I want to work. 

Despite what the Tech evangelists tell us, devices LIMIT sometimes, and the e-book limits my reading experience.

Finally, I honestly like to own my books, and not pay for access. I return again and again to my books and right there in them are my notes and thoughts. I don't have to make sure my device battery is charged or whether there's a wifi connection. Just open it and you're there. That's pretty darn efficient.

I still purchase a e-book every now and then, but it is usually one I read for relaxation or interest. It's the books I usually give away. It is never one that I will re-read or return to. Though, there are times when I purchase an e-book first, but find that I want a physical copy instead. 

There are obvious issues with physical books but one adapts. For example, the photo below is my solution for that stack of books I kept by my chair on the end table. The book tree works well. I can see my titles and pull and replace easily. Of course a single Kindle on a table would replace, would it not? God forbid! Then it brings its distractions, charging issues, etc.

This really is an illustration of "reverse digital conversion." We all need to think outside the silicon box that technology has placed us. Perhaps then, we will rediscover old experiences and invent new ones. The world is not yet encased in chips, and if it is, I don't envy living in such a place.