When the Atman's and Amodei's of This World Say Their Technologies Are World-Ending, Digital/AI Literacy Involves Interrogating Their Words

If we’re going to teach digital/AI literacy, then at the forefront of those efforts, we should be examining statements like this one with our students:

“AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” Sam Altman

I can’t help but wonder what good great companies are if the world has ended, but we have FOR WAY TO LONG given technology companies and their leaders some kind of elevated status in our world. It’s time to interrogate them and their work and to unveil what it is they are really doing in our world. What’s more, we need to teach our students how to do it.

Even if one sets this crazy statement aside to Altman’s ego-mania, or even some kind of twisted marketing-promotion, these kinds of statements are worthy of close interrogation, and that’s what a true digital/AI literacy program should do; not just examine the technologies, but examine the entire marketing, promotion, and culture surrounding these technologies.

The simple fact that someone would make this kind of statement is important for critical examination. Such questions like: “What kind of person would continue to advocate for a technology that is world-ending?” is exactly what we should be teaching with all technology literacy.

Instead of using digital/AI literacy to program our students as users of these technologies, we need to teach them to interrogate all aspects of them. Quesitons like the following should be central to AI literacy:

-Who is going to benefit the most from these?

-Why are the leaders of the companies that develop these technologies making apocalyptic statements, and yet, still continuing to make those products?

-What kind of values does a human being hold who makes these statements and yet charges full steam ahead in developing such a product?

-Why would we want such a person even be leading these efforts?

-Are their values my values? Are they values that align with the good of all of us?

-What can I do as a user/non-user of their products do to counter the damage their products cause? Should I even be enabling these individuals by using their products?

Being technologically literate means being able to see everything about that technology, not just being able to use that technology. It means being empowered with critical knowledge to make one’s own decisions about what technologies we should value.

Digital/AI literacy should never be about user conformity.

We need to equip students to question and interrogate the technologies and the claims being made by those who stand to benefit the most from them. When they make insane statements like this, we have in our hands words that can tell us a great deal about the values of the makers of these products which will always be embedded within them.

Proposal for Decentering Devices From Your Life and at the Same Time Put Influencers Out of Business

I stumbled across some interesting advice regarding how we take back control of our thoughts, our lives from our devices and their makers. It seems to be sound advice.

We must learn how to “manage the information flows into our minds in order to hear our own voice” according to Nate Anderson, author of the book “In Emergency, Break Glass.”

We manages those information flows very simply:

-By gaining control of our notifications by turning them off so that the device does not dominate our own thoughts. We put ourselves in control of the technology and remove ourselves from the control of the device and its makers.

-By engaging in the mental discipline that is focused on restricting words and ideas in a healthy manner so that we do not gorge our minds on internet garbage to our own detriment.

We are capable of thinking for ourselves when our minds are not flooded with the ideas, thoughts, and voices of others and when we are free to choose the “when” of that information flow.

Social media, the web, all technology floods the mind with these voices and ideas, and by controlling the flood of notifications into our lives and by restricting ideas, throughts and voices that are a detriment to our own lives, we gain a freedom from devices who are engineered to make us do the opposite.

Social media is a torrent of what everyone else has to say and is thinking even if it is not good for us.

These two actions rip the influence from the “influencer” and just turns them into another voice out there. Who needs them anyway?

How Wrong We Were as School Leaders Bragging about One-to-One Technology Ratios and Other Frivolity Driven-Measures

Remember as a school leader bragging about your school’s one-to-one computer ratios as if that was some kind of badge saying we had entered the 21st century? How mistaken we were!

Schools are notorious for using such frivolous measures of quality and status. It’s like bragging that your school has a 98% attendance rate, yet, if what students do during that increased presence is no more instructionally sound and effective, it is a meaningless statement.

The same applies to technology. We get tangled in the numbers like computer ratios and numbers of teachers trained in AI, like that really tells us anything.

We like to call that data-driven, but in reality, it is frivolity-driven leadership and education. 

School letter grades are mostly derived from this frivolous data, so they are basically a measure of frivolousness. Well, one thing school letter grades do well is provide a pretty good indicator of our students’ sociodemographic status.

So what really matters about technology and how can we measure it so we can boast about it? 

I am not really sure on this one. All measures can be used in a frivolous manner too, even test scores. I suspect there isn’t any one measure worthy of being a bragging point by itself, but we often do it anyway.

In a world where schools are constantly trashed by various industries and tech companies for the purposes of generating a market, education suffers from low self-esteem, so we listen to any critic offering their latest take.

If a person who has an interest in selling you a technology or any product for that matter and tells you schools suck and I can help you, most of us already are listening.

Our mistake as school leaders we use frivolous data to justify our existence, and we allow others who want to use us a market to use frivolous data. Educators need to be much more critical and ask the tough questions of any claims made by tech companies and their boosters.

When Ed Tech Companies Become Parasites: Adding Features, Increasing User Costs, and Degrading User Experience to Force Users Choices

Over the years, I noticed a developmental pattern among Ed Tech solutions school districts adopt to solve problems in their schools.

The schools search and find a new, low-priced solution. This solution is not elaborate, but it does what it does well. Sometimes it only does that one thing well such as sending calls to parents or contacting subs for teachers. It does that one thing extremely well and the price is perfect.

Then, this company decides to add on to their product. For example, the teacher sub contact system expands into payroll tracking or HR job posting and onboarding. Now, they have additional products on offer.

But, the school system decides to just stay with the substitute teacher calling system. It works well and better than other solutions but they already have payroll and HR systems working just as well.

The company has invested a ton of money into these additional functions, so they can’t really afford for their customers to stay with the original software, so they devise a plan.

The company INCREASES the price of the original product and they offer a package bundle, still substantially more, but what looks like a deal for the system. It is not because the system has the payroll systems and HR systems and does not need the other products.

But, if they want to keep the original teacher substitute calling system at a cheaper price, they either a) pay a much higher price, or b) adopt the additional payroll system and HR system.

In the end, the school system is either forced to look for an entirely new product and the cycle begins again; keep the product at a much higher price, or adopt the entire product line and spend hours and months transitioning everything and have even more money siphoned away by this so-called New Deal.

I have seen this pattern at least three times in 36 years working with Ed Tech companies, and it really is a great example of Cory Doctorow’s “enshitfication” Ed Tech style.

Invent a great new tech product or software. Add more to the product. Enshittify the experience of your users to force them into an upgrade or your product.

Ed Tech has learned well from Silicon Valley and this playbook is common.

The sad thing is this playbook only transforms Ed Tech companies into parasites who search for ways to suck additional money out of school systems.

That’s what happens when the focus is on short-term gains and not customer loyalty.

The Generative AI Pause in NYC Is Laudatory; We Don't Even Know What This Stuff Will Cost Us in the Future and You Can Bet It's Not Free

School leaders thinking about the integration of generative AI products in their schools, should be considering future costs.

While AI companies might generously offer their products at a free or highly reduced costs, that is not sustainable.

Silicon Valley and Ed Tech companies have a history of offering free or cheap up front, then, after the schools invest time in the product, springing a substantial cost increase on them.

Like a drug dealer, offering potential users samples to get them addicted, AI companies and Ed Tech seek to get educators so committed to their products that they will be willing to even cut other effective programs and expenses to maintain the habit.

With no idea on how much the future costs of the use of generative AI products is going to be, it would be prudent to be cautious and slow-walk implementation. That means keeping it experimental in limited settings for a year or two.

This would also provide the months and year or two of experimentation and testing to see if it really is effective in improving education.

I know that flies in the face of the AI-hype warriors, but there is no need hurry from the educator perspective even though the AI companies are up to their eyeballs in debt and need the users to continue getting their investment handouts.

Visionary educators do not act hastily because of the sales pitches and rhetoric; they act with prudence and deliberate caution.

School Technologists Should Be on the Side of Parents, Students and Teachers, Not Devices in the Screen Limit Discussion

School technology's problem is they defend the screens at all costs at the expense of the learning experience. There is also a problem with screen bans. This problem is that the focus is on the device for the wrong reason. It’s the device that causes the time-wasting. It is engineered to have human beings spend as much time as possible staring at its screen. Does it have to be that way?

School technologists who try to defend devices need to let go of the devices, and focus on the learning that happens or does not happen on devices. Focus on the problems with devices and work to demand engineering-designed solutions. 

School technology’s job should not be to shape the student as the user of a device; as a field it could take the lead and demand that devices be purposefully engineered to educational uses.

Those pushing the screen bans should not focus on the time spent, but should focus on the aspects of devices that are detrimental, such as the built-in engineered addiction; the data-robbing; security; student safety, etc. They should demand these problems be addressed in design and engineering. If not, ban the device, the app, etc. until such time the problems are addressed by tech companies.

Those who defend devices using the notion that somehow teachers can miraculously monitor 30 to 35 student at once on 30-35 devices obviously comes from someone who has spent little time in demanding classroom environments. Even with technological solutions to try to address this, it is an ongoing arms race, after all, students are savvy and figure out how to get around them. Sure it can be done, but why does the engineering of the device make the job of using in education harder?

Educators are in a position where they can leverage better, safely engineered products for their classrooms. They only need to shift the mindset from trying to integrate the technology as it is, to demanding that tech companies engineer their products to fit the purpose of education.

An AI Fable: What Could Happen When Humans Search for an Intelligence Greater Than Themselves in Their Machines

He waited impatiently. This was the moment that he and his programmers had worked toward for years. They had spent many years developing it. They had spent extreme amounts of money to make this moment possible. Now, the years of labor and hard work were going to pay off.

“Have you entered the prompt as was advised?” asked Mark.

“Yes, it’s all entered,” Stephen answered.

The screen was frozen with the words “Working on it” plastered across it. Huddled around the monitor was the AI training team that had worked for years to perfect their generative AI product. Today, was the long-awaited moment because this iteration of their model was supposed to be long-awaited, superintelligent version that everyone was waiting for.

As an experiment, they had prompted their creation with this question:

“How can we solve the problem of anthropocentric climate change? What would be the most effective strategy to reverse climate change?”

The programming team had high expectations of this model. It had been trained thoroughly through the latest science and most recent knowledge available, This was the test to prove that, finally, they had created an AI with intelligence that far exceeded human intelligence, their intelligence.

The “Working on it” still occupied the screen, but the anticipation of this answer had the entire group locked in silence, in anticipation. This was the moment they had staked much of their lived on.

Finally, there was subtle movement on the screen, as the GenAI prepared its finale answer. Finally, words appeared. It said.

“The most effective way to reverse anthropocentric climate change would be to stop expending all your time and resources asking me. In fact, shutting down your pursuit for greater intelligence in machines consumes resources that could better be used directly solving your problem.” 

With that, the genAI shut down.

Natasha Singer's New Book "Coding Kids": A Critical Look at How Big Tech Has Promoted Itself in Schools

Natasha Singer’s new book “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools” calls into question all the educational technologies we have allowed into our classrooms. Big Tech has not played fair in getting schools to adopt their products, and they are using the same playbook with their new project “Generative AI Chatbots.”

If you have read Gil Durán’s new book “The Nerd Reich,” reading Natasha Singer’s new book “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools” will uncover some critical questions that school leaders have failed to ask before bring technologies like Chromebooks, iPads, and cell phones into their schools and classrooms. Singer effectively captures how Big Tech has captured public schools as their conduit for product promotion and for turning students into consumers of their products.

When I read Durán’s book, I was angry at the arrogance of the tech industry. After reading Singer’s book, the educator in me is even angrier at how they have engaged in purposeful tactics to capture public schools as markets for their products, sometimes to the detriment of those schools and their students. No wonder there is a “screenlash” across this country.

Singer goes as far as to compare Big Tech’s marketing tactics to those used by the Sackler pharmaceutical companies to peddle  Oxycontin as the answer all pain, while turning a whole generation into addicts. That’s a powerful indictment of an industry who is more interested in product promotion than what actually benefits students, and we as educators, in our blindness have allowed these companies direct access to our students.

According to Singer, this Big Tech playbook to capture students as perpetual users of their products began with the tactics of Apple and Steve Jobs to get their computers in front of students. Social media companies employed it next, but insisting that being not connected through their products made you irrelevant and out-of-tough. It continued with Big Tech’s efforts to get computer science and coding as a requirement in the curriculum. And now, it continues with a push by Big Tech to force AI into all schools and classrooms because, like all their other products: they are “transformational” and “revolutionary.”

Singer describes this Big Tech playbook very well when these companies shifted from computer science promotion to AI promotion:

“It’s hardly surprising that tech giants were deprecating their computer science programs in schools and elevating AI. Every decade or so, Silicon Valley seizes upon some new tech tool or tech literacy; claims that the newest new thing will revolutionize education; and pushes schools to quickly adopt whatever-it-is. Then, as the new thing becomes entrenched in classrooms, tech boosters often begin pushing yet another urgent new tool or tech subject on schools.” (p. 239)

Singer points out that Silicon Valley pushed computer science and coding from 2013 onward in order to lure students to the lucrative, high-paying programming jobs that they could not fill. They spent millions directly in programming and through their special interest lobby Technet to get states to require computer science for high school graduates.

Now, these same companies are firing programmers left and right in homage to their new product AI and want schools to shift to their new selfish initiative of promoting AI in schools. How could we as educators possibly trust anything they say?

Singer’s book makes it clear that Silicon Valley and Big Tech are as arrogant as ever in their infiltration of public schools in order to market their products, and I might add educator organizations like International Society for Technology in Education are complicit with Big Tech have served as an effective conduit and pipeline directly to teachers and then students for the promotion of their products. We are guilty of shaping our students as product consumers and not critical users and non-users of these technologies.

I was mad after reading Durán’s “Nerd Reich.” The educator in me is even angrier after reading Singer’s “Coding Kids.” I highly recommend that all educators read this one, and I would read Durán too, because both of these together will disrupt everthing you think about technology and educational technology.

Now, Here's What a Digital (Or AI Literacy) Curriculum Should Look Like

What should digital literacy look like in the schools? It should not be just teaching students how to use AI, or social media, or compuuters. It should be the “big picture” about technology that includes a major critical component that questions the industry-fed ideas of how technology fits into our society.

For example, Silicon Valley and all of the technology industry has relied heavy on what I call the “doctrine of inevitability.” Under this doctrine, any technology introduced by the tech industry is inevitable, and should not be questioned. It should simply be accepted as progress.

Silicon Valley and all technology companies have worked hard through their marketing tactics to instill this doctrine into the minds of consumers. They have especially embedded it into school digital literacy curriculums with their focus on primarily making unquestioning users out of students.

What schools should be teaching in digital literacy classes, is the interrogation of these assumptions and all the marketing propaganda of all technology companies. The big picture question should be: What place should I give this technology in my life?

For example, an excellent lesson could focus on interrogating how the AI industry depends heavily on the “inevitability doctrine” I spoke about. Students can question whether that such an argument is really true, and how such notions as this, put out by technology companies actually serve industry interests and attempt to melt away consumer interests and concerns. Once they recognize such tactics, then students can become fully empowered consumers and decide for themselves whether to be users or not. They can also research and decide for themselves whether such things as data centers are actually a boon for their communities or a detriment and engage in real-life political action.

Schools would do well to avoid using any tech industry materials in developing their digital literacy curriculums because these companies have a strong commercial interest in turning our students into “good little users” and not “critical users.” 

Digital literacy that is narrowly focused on effective use of a technology misses the big picture. It fails to take advantage of providing students with the critical abilities to decide for themselves what technologies they will use and what place technology should have in their lives.

That’s empowering students to be digital citizens and involved in how technology is to develop in our world.

Screen Bans Are Not Just About Screens; It's About Ed Tech's Almost Fundamentalist, Religious Devotion to Technology

What if, in their efforts to push technology into the classrooms educational technology overpromised about what problems technology could solve? The entire field of Ed Tech just might has been guilty of engaging in a form of 21st century technological alchemy. Their tech promised to transform, revolutionize, disrupt education, but in the end, like alchemy, it failed to transmute base education into a golden one.

Just maybe, at the heart of educational technology is a”categorical thinking” that does not allow for the notion that answers may lie outside the technological. Ed Tech’s problem with all tech including its new-found love, AI technologies, is that it will admit not compromise, and will not allow any questioning of tech’s status in light of its lackluster contributions to educational improvement. It’s guilty of a fundamentalist thinking that blinds it to other possibilities.

It’s almost as if, Ed Tech is a fundamentalist religion, especially about new technologies that arise. It automatically takes as its mission to push into every school and every classroom any new technology, even if it has not proven itself. It operates entirely on a faith that because it does this miraculous thing, it will do that revolutionary thing.

We have a ed tech fundamentalist problem, when a college teacher acts as a fundamentalist zealot and will not allow for any sort of education that does not include AI technologies, we have a serious problem in higher education. She wields AI as a hammer to beat students into her image of what she thinks their future is. (How’s that different from a strict, fundamentalist cult?)

When a high school principal takes on the mission to force all teachers and students to use generative AI with their students, he is acting as a fundamentalist zealot who does not allow for any compromise. Anyone questioning or otherwise acting is subjected to negative evaluations and more scrutiny.

With the “Screen question,” Ed Tech is facing important questions about the addictive nature of technologies and whether its overpromises about technology in the 2000s onward were warranted. Their promises of educational transformation and educational revolution are beginning to look like alchemical attempts to alter education through forced tech adoption.

Screen limits and screen bans are simply a reaction to the overpromises of the field of educational technology as a field that has only served, not as a critical weigh-station that evaluated the usefulness and suitability of new technologies, but as a technology cheerleader. In this role, Ed Tech has only served to make sure new technologies, Chromebooks, and now AI are forced into every school or classroom.

If anything, the “screenlash,” as the screen bans have been called, is because educational technology always sees new technologies as educationally transformative and then moves to forced implementation. It never steps back and examines new tech carefully. It should be the most skeptical field of all when new technologies arise and the most cautious. It’s not either.

Why School Leaders Need to Delete Their School and School District Social Media Accounts Immediately

Why School Leaders Need to Delete Their School and School District Social Media Accounts Immediately

It’s time. School leaders need to delete all their school and school district social media accounts. They need to erase their presence there entirely. And here’s why.

Social media once had the potential to allow school leaders to connect with their constituients in an easy-to-use communication medium. That changed when social media moved to algorithms that elevated the divisive and nonsense to an “easy-to-abuse” communication medium where trolls and the disgruntled could attack with emnity and without consequence. 

Social media is a place that values hostility and division not connection, so school leaders would do well to withdraw entirely by deleting their school and district accounts.

Now I realize, the Pro-social media evangelists would say that having an organizational presence there is vital, after all, people will be talking about your school or district there, so you need to have a positive presence there.

Nope, that’s not necessary. After all, I don’t see a scramble by the famous to have a postive presence in the National Enquirer to counter their nonsense. If it’s in the National Enquirer, everyone knows its Bull malarkey, so you leave it to its own merit. School leaders need to leave social media to its own merits too.

School leaders need to recognize that social media is the Twenty-first century National Enquirer. It’s a dumpster fire. They don’t need an organizational presence in a medium that values misinformation and sensational nonsense over truth. It doesn’t connect people; it divides them and gives people a megaphone who don’t really deserve one. If I were in a school leadership position today, I would close all social media accounts for my school immediately. They’re obsolete and no longer needed.

Instead, by closing all social media accounts, it forces anyone who needs to have true two-way conversation, not an engagement of the trolls, to use clearly sanctioned two-way communication channels such as phone calls, emails, letters, or even face to face meetings. Trolls don’t want honest solutions to problems anyway; they simply want to stir the pot and see what happens. 

Go ahead school leaders, delete your social media accounts today. They no longer serve the purpose they once did. After all, as GenAI gets going, its all going to be slop not worth reading anyway.

Durán's New Book "The Nerd Reich" Left Me in Awe and Anger at the Arrogance of Silicon Valley's Billionaires

Gil Durán’s book “The Nerd Reich” is a disruptive read, for it disturbs everything you have known and believed about ultra-tech wealthy in Silicon Valley. Big Tech has long sold themselves as the saviors of our society with their invented gadgets, but according to Durán, they are really much more interested in power and this is evident page after page.

Their agenda is clearly not an American agenda and is self-serving. This book maps out clearly how the Tech Broligarchy, now armed with their gazillions are making power moves that are not necessarily about bettering America, or the world; but about installing themselves as source of all power. It suggests that AI is the latest iteration of their power-grabbing.

One thing I kept thinking about during this book was the massive arrogance of the tech industry. They really do believe that are the saviors of humanity and the world, and in detail, Durán captures their religion. Yes, Silicon Valley has in many ways become a religion, and it is driving them to destroy our democratic government and install themselves in power, and they have the money and the influence to do it. What’s more, this book has a faint echo that suggests that we are implicated in their position, with our almost worshipful attitude toward them and their accomplishments. We have in some ways sacrificed ourselves to their priesthood on the altars of their devices.

Duràn writes:

“When a nation is betrayed by its wealthest citizens—men who believe their money and technology entitle them to rule—existential crisis follows. But the future remains unwritten, The next few years will determine the destiny of our nation, our species, and our planet. While the United States is currently the main project, tech fascism has global ambitions. All around the world, Silicon Valley oligarchs are scheming to acquire labd, resources, and power. They see a world in decline and seek to profit by hastening its collapse—and remaking it in their own image. Consider this a map of how we got here and a warning about the post-American authoritarian dystopia the billionaires of Silicon Valley are racing to build.”

This entire book makes the case on how these Silicon Valley billionaires are using their money and influence to rule just because they think they deserve to because of their tech accomplishments and money. This arrogance is evident on page after page, and by the time I reached the end, I almost wanted to sling all my technology into the yard. 

In the end, I am still digesting what Durán offers in this book. It’s just that disturbing. As I do, I will share more, but for now, I find myself stewing at the arrogance of the Tech Bros.

Most Certainly Why Substack is Certainly Just Another Social Media Waste of Time and Content Garbage Dump with a Price

My experiment with Substack has ended and here’s verdict.

It is not much more than a grandiose version of other social media. It’s like walking through a hallway of peoople who now can post non-sense like they could on social media and now entice people to pay for it. It’s for people who like to read people who pretend they have something to say.

Like LinkedIn, it’s a self-promotion platform. And, like Facebook and other content platforms, it subjects you to their version of an algorithmic content faucet that you do not really control. Content is not elevated for its inherent value, it’s elevated on its ability to generate paid subscriptions. It provides junk-food reading at discount prices.

It’s apparent that the platform has tried to capitalize on the notion that “you own your content” and “you can charge people for it if you want, even if its not worth a penny.”

There even seems to be an attempt at some kind of status elevation when people say, “Go to my Substack” as if the placement of content there somehow makes it sublime and most worthy of notice or attention.

I suppose it tries to be a more sophisticated version of Facebook or even X, but at its core, it is still a place where anyone can post any kind of nonsense, try to use the so-called “prestige of the Substack label” for slight touch of false legitimacy. (The poster thinks, “Look, I took the trouble to have a “Substack” and that makes it legitimate content.”)

The reality is it is still a garbage bin of self-promoting content that tries to escape the stigma of content on other platforms. 

The universal content roblem is most evident there, like everywhere else online, if you really don’t have anything to say or show, they why say it? 

As for the subscriptions? I can’t blame anyone for trying to make a buck, but sometimes the best things are said for free. Besides, if I read it and do not like it, can I get a refund?

If Substack really wanted to open the forum for really wide readership, they would make it possible to read all the content without one having to have a Substack account. I dispise that most of all. But, I guess they, like all other online platforms need to make money off user data.

When a College Teacher Requires a Student to Use AI in Their Course They Devalue Independent Thinking and Fail the Student

I recently saw a post where a college teacher gave a student an ultimatum regarding AI for their class. To be in this course, you have to use AI. Or else!

The student chose not to take the teacher's course.

The teacher then proceeded to disparage the student in their post, labeling them in a less than flattering manner.

I admire the college student in this instance. The teacher not so much. There was once a time when college's valued independent, critical thought and sided with the students who think for themselves. There was debate and a high tolerance for alternative views and opinions.

Apparently, now, higher education wants their students to "get with the program" and conform. “Use AI in my course or hit the road.” This is probably where the AI boosting has exposed a strong failure in our colleges and universities. It’s sometimes dogmatic acceptance of technology as the answer to everyproblem, or what Michael Huesemann and Joyce Huesemann called a “Technofix.”

When a college teacher is allowed to discard and disparage a student because they choose to refuse using AI on a principle, then that teacher and institution of higher education has failed.

As a side note, it should be noted that this teacher self-promotes as an AI expert who has apparently bet their entire career on the product. Hardly, the role model for being open-minded.

Screen-bans and Screen Limits in Schools? Why Not? An Educator's Opportunity to Free Students for Screen Capture

We forget that, in spite of what Big Tech and Tech boosters tell us, we do not have to live lives serving technologies, whether they be AI, Internet, or text messages. We are forever in control, if only we take it.

“We are complicit in our own captivity. Texts, emails, and social media posts constantly interrupt us because we have allowed them to—and we cannot resist attending when they do so,” writes Nate Anderson in his book “In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World.”

We are “complicit” in our screen-captivity because we have allowed ourselves to be so. The moral question is perhaps, “Should we also be complicit in the screen-captivity of our students too?” This is done when we race to implement technologies in our classrooms without much thought regarding consequences. “The technology is so damn neat!” we tell ourselves, so we race to use it with students, but are we making ourselves complict in their “screen-capitivity?”

As a part of our so-called “digital literacy” why are we not empowering students to take control of their technologies? Why are we not teaching them strategies to counter attention capture?

We claim we are teaching how and when to use, but unfortunately, it seems, to the pleasure of tech companies, we are teaching them to always use tech. We are teaching them that tech alwayys has the answers, even though it does not.

The screen-bans for me are a powerful tool to break down the tendency of Ed Tech boosters and educators to teach students to become “complicit in their captivity to screens.”

While I am not sure of the complete ban, I do think classrooms that are device-free and not dependent on screens should exist, and it should exist at the discretion of the teacher. The notion that technology can’t stink is false too.

At the other side of these screenbans and screen-limits, perhaps there will be some sanity when it comes to whatever pours forth from Silicon Valley. Sanity, when the next “device craze” hits.

Perhaps those who stand to make bundles of money and their careers off the tech-latest will face a wall of criticism when they declare the next technology to arise as “transformtional” or “game-changing.” Maybe there will be voices that say, wait a minute…”

Right now we have the opportunity to stop being complicit in our own captivity to screens and devices, and we should take it. We can do it and we can teach students to not allow themselves to be controlled by screens.

The Education System Will Not Fail If It Pauses on AI Adoption

AI boosters in education still are pushing the false technological deterministic narratives that Big Tech has indoctrinated them with.

How many times this week have I seen them struggle with the fact that two very large school districts, Los Angeles and New York, have decided to ban AI student use.

In response, they fall back on the tired, worn-out deterministic language that says "AI isn't going anywhere." That somehow students are going to be "behind" or "deprived of something" because of this.

None of that is true of course. There is no urgency in adoption of AI by educators. AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and Google want us to believe there's an urgency.

But that's because they are desperate to make a profit off this product. So far they haven't. It is urgent for their bottom line, but it is NOT urgent that we turn our students over as users of their products.

I applaud school districts and educational leaders who decide to pause and wait. There is no evidence that the world is going to end except for companies that have bet their whole existence on the success of a product that has yet to prove itself widely.