I love this! As someone who started from a pure humanities background, your point about wisdom and imagination being as crucial as technical skills really hits home. I actually just launched a Substack called "The Humanist's Guide to AI" because I kept seeing this exact need - helping bridge the gap between technical development and human understanding.
Your blog assignment experiment particularly caught my eye. I'm finding that creating spaces for reflection, whether in the classroom or through writing, helps people process these massive technological changes in more thoughtful ways. Would love to hear more about how your students responded to having that space to think through the human side of their technical work.
Feel free to check out what we're exploring at The Humanist's Guide if you're interested in joining these conversations! Your perspective on building socio-technical thinking into STEM education would be really valuable.
I love the idea of bringing current events discussions into the classroom. I think this fundamental for helping students understand how the creation of new technologies ends up playing out in the real world (science & tech in society).
Among the many problems with tech today are 3 that stand out in my mind:
1. The tension between the interest of tech creators and that of tech users: As a case in point, Zuckerberg knows that his platform creates a lot of problems, especially among younger folks. Yet, he’s adamantly resisted making changes that would alleviate the problems he’s causing because that would not be in his own best financial interest.
2. The tension between ought and is: There are many frictions in the world that are at best uncomfortable and at worst painful. Yet, working through these frictions is how we grow as people. Many technologies have been created that eliminate frictions from everyday life prevent us from personal growth. Josh, your recent article discussing how to get your students to undertake difficult tasks that will help them learn, rather than simply having LLM do those tasks for them is on point.
3. Not thinking through the second order effects: Too many tech developers don’t think through all the probable first-, second-order effects of their technologies which may create positive direct effects, but much larger negative indirect effects. One example that comes to mind is pre-packaged individual servings of everything. While it saves on time to buy a bag of, say, individually packaged snack items, the excessive resource costs of all the extra packaging are socially wasteful. Part of the problem here is that people tend to value convenience above all, despite the potential negative tradeoffs the added convenience require.
I love this! As someone who started from a pure humanities background, your point about wisdom and imagination being as crucial as technical skills really hits home. I actually just launched a Substack called "The Humanist's Guide to AI" because I kept seeing this exact need - helping bridge the gap between technical development and human understanding.
Your blog assignment experiment particularly caught my eye. I'm finding that creating spaces for reflection, whether in the classroom or through writing, helps people process these massive technological changes in more thoughtful ways. Would love to hear more about how your students responded to having that space to think through the human side of their technical work.
Feel free to check out what we're exploring at The Humanist's Guide if you're interested in joining these conversations! Your perspective on building socio-technical thinking into STEM education would be really valuable.
I love the idea of bringing current events discussions into the classroom. I think this fundamental for helping students understand how the creation of new technologies ends up playing out in the real world (science & tech in society).
Among the many problems with tech today are 3 that stand out in my mind:
1. The tension between the interest of tech creators and that of tech users: As a case in point, Zuckerberg knows that his platform creates a lot of problems, especially among younger folks. Yet, he’s adamantly resisted making changes that would alleviate the problems he’s causing because that would not be in his own best financial interest.
2. The tension between ought and is: There are many frictions in the world that are at best uncomfortable and at worst painful. Yet, working through these frictions is how we grow as people. Many technologies have been created that eliminate frictions from everyday life prevent us from personal growth. Josh, your recent article discussing how to get your students to undertake difficult tasks that will help them learn, rather than simply having LLM do those tasks for them is on point.
3. Not thinking through the second order effects: Too many tech developers don’t think through all the probable first-, second-order effects of their technologies which may create positive direct effects, but much larger negative indirect effects. One example that comes to mind is pre-packaged individual servings of everything. While it saves on time to buy a bag of, say, individually packaged snack items, the excessive resource costs of all the extra packaging are socially wasteful. Part of the problem here is that people tend to value convenience above all, despite the potential negative tradeoffs the added convenience require.