DL 365
Slow Poisons
Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue #365. This week, I shared the following project:
- When You Know Better, Do Better: Developing Anti-Racist, Digitally Literate Educators through Critical Media Literacy
A collaborative manuscript exploring the intersections of anti-racism and digital literacies.
🔖 Key Takeaways
- AI’s Labor Behind the Curtain: Highlighting the hidden human workforce shaping AI tools.
- Surveillance in Learning: Trust, surveillance, and ethical questions in educational spaces.
- Body Doubling: A curious remote working trend with implications for privacy and productivity.
- Critical AI Perspectives: Challenging myths about AI and exploring its societal impacts.
📚 This Week’s Highlights
1. The Slow Poison of Endless Fantasy
A young knight is seduced by a spirit offering enticing visions, ultimately costing him his potential. This allegorical tale by James McIntosh explores the dangers of distraction.
Why this matters: How do the seemingly minor distractions in our lives impact our potential and goals?
2. The Human Labor Behind AI
AI models like ChatGPT rely on a hidden workforce for training and moderation. Recent efforts to unionize African workers moderating AI tools for major platforms like Facebook and TikTok are inspiring.
📖 Read more
📖 Unionization story
Why this matters: AI creates new jobs, but are these the careers we want? And at what human cost?
3. AI as a Weapon
AI tools are increasingly used as rhetorical weapons in online harassment. John Herrman discusses how AI fuels discourse about job displacement and creative worth.
Why this matters: Conversations about AI often become ideological battlegrounds, highlighting societal tensions around automation.
4. Better Before It Gets Worse?
Ted Chiang critiques the myth of AI as an all-powerful entity, framing it instead as a tool shaped by its creators. He advocates for democratic and ethical design.
Why this matters: How can we design AI systems that address inequities without pushing society toward collapse?
5. Body Doubling in Remote Work
Body doubling, or parallel working, involves co-working via video with others. Popular on TikTok and Zoom, it raises questions about accountability, privacy, and productivity.
Why this matters: This trend reveals evolving work habits and the psychological needs of remote workers.
6. Trust in the Classroom
Jeffrey Moro critiques surveillance tools in education, arguing they erode trust and create adversarial learning environments.
Why this matters: Ethical education requires nurturing trust, not enforcing compliance through surveillance.
🛠️ DO: Let Go of Worry
Ryan Holiday encourages adopting amor fati (love of fate) and focusing on the present. His advice: Do what you can with what you have—right now.
🌟 Closing Reflection
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.”
— Antony Jay
Thank you for reading Digitally Literate. Stay tuned for more insights and discussions. Connect with me at hello@digitallyliterate.net or explore Newsletter Index for all past issues.