It is alright.
Aubrey Watters writes (emphasis mine):
If you do not know what to say, if you do not know what to write, if you do not know what to think, it isn't a signal that you are flawed, that you are inadequate, inept, inarticulate. Sure, you might be lacking something – ideas, words, clarity, what have you – and certainly the latest “hot, new” product promises to fill up the page for you. But if you don't know what to say, it is quite alright to say nothing. You needn't supplicate the machine-oracle for “inspiration.” (It's not inspiration after all; it's autocomplete.)
You were not put here to “create content,” although surely this is what the “AI” gods (and the tech industry writ large) demand of us.
It is alright to be speechless when things are overwhelming. It is alright to sit in uncertainty, to contemplate. It is alright. It is expected.
Indeed, part of the problem, perhaps, is we live in a culture (an economy, a technology infratructure) that demands we speak on everything, that demands we post, we update, we share. “Say anything,” post something, or you are nothing.
And it resonates. Sarah Jaffe and Craig Gent talk about hope and being part of something. They read from a poem by Marge Piercy. It ends like this:
It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again and they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more.
They talk about David Graeber and a piece in the LRB by Richard Seymour called Baseline Communism that sounds excellent. Seymour also talked about Graeber in a related podcast. And I want to read Dawn of Everything again. Or rather start anew and finish it or keep going. Whichever. Where does one train to read Anthropology? To understand it and to learn from it? Did university teach me nothing or did my time at the computer shatter any resemblance of information intake?
Here is Aubrey Watters again:
What it means when teachers and professors push the button to create “AI” slop for themselves or for their students – whether that's assignments, handouts, quizzes, feedback, slide-decks, or essays; whether that's students pushing the button to create “AI” slop for their instructors.
And I think of my colleagues praising AI tools for what they can do for them and their classes. And here I get stuck in the sand. Between thoughts of optimization and relearning to do nothing. Relearning once again to fall into a book. To learn from it. Finding time for it. We'll see.