How to (Re)See the Miracles Right in Front of You
On Friction, Inefficiency, and Strangeness in the A.I. Era
We humans need habits: they help us find our classrooms, formulate our thoughts, and locate light switches in the dark. But habits can rob us of the very sensations of being alive. How often do we resort to the habitual in our writing? In other creative work? In our lives?
At a time when students are under pressure to apply to more internships, post more on LinkedIn, do more networking, build their personal brands, what if they did less? At a time when efficiency is worshipped like a god, and tech giants promise that AI systems will soon deliver us into a promised land of limitless productivity, should we stop to wonder why?
Doerr will investigate the formulaic and the familiar, from clichés at the sentence level to conventions at the narrative level, and ask how we might better recognize and resist the habitual—how we might look outside our algorithms to re-see the astonishing things right in front of our noses.
Originally published at pls.nd.edu.