The Bar is So Low
This is supposed to be optimistic.
Just throw your punches and have no hesitance; follow hunches in spite of evidence.
Every morning I go to LinkedIn to play the logic games Queens and Tango, not the word ones.. This also means I get to (have to?) see the top few posts the algorithm sends my way. More often than not, it is AI slop or AI slop-adjacent. Given my line of work, it is usually a thinly veiled ad for some sort of proposed productivity tool, something driven by generative AI to near-instantly create resources that most people dedicate their profession to crafting. Make a children's book with illustrations. Create leveled and scaffolded lesson plans. Engage your audience with flashy designs. I avoid this for a plethora of reasons, but resign myself to facing a field full of this generated content.
But that flood never really comes. Sure my social media feeds are ruined, but I don't blame AI for that; social media has always been filled with spam and fillers. I am sure plenty of people are using these programs Not teachers, probably consultants., at the very least experimenting with them, but their output never make it past a glance in an algorithmic feeds. As long as I don't think about the power consumption and ethical nightmare of it all, it is quite fleeting. So what gets to stick?
A new idea. Something genuine. It's nice when it is well packaged, but all that matters is the heart. That's all it takes. Look at the articles and ideas that actually spread. The short, impassioned rants shared by Y Combinator's Hacker News. Cory Doctorow's musings on the state of the social web. Countless RSS-delivered thoughts on personal pages. None of it powered by the latest and greatest in AI.
I am not implying that all of these things are easy to do. But they do not require immense technical prowess. I want to draw light on how not one needed a new tool to happen. The Internet can be an open and beutiful public forum but it is so easy to be tricked into thinking that there are layers of refinement needed to have a voice. This is so far from the truth, all you need is to commit your idea to text and it can have a platform. The bar is so low. Your thoughts already clear it.