So.many.thoughts.and.questions. Thank you Sam for continuing to share this story and deep reflections on this messy place.
And, you know where I'm going to go with this, given my focus on nature-based education - I wonder how bots can be the stage crew supporting connections with more-than-human nature AND the human-human connections that are nurtured by nature. In the diagram, this is in the upper right quadrant -- and I am excited about its possibility. AND...I have seen so much to be concerned about in terms of our capacity to deal with not knowing who or what we are as humans. This is exactly what I worry about: 'Play that out over a longer time horizon, Vallor warns, and what we’ll get is not a cure for what ails us, but an “evolving and troubled relationship with the machines we have built as mirrors to tell us who we are, when we ourselves don’t know.”' And what does this mean about our capacity to empathize with non-human nature?
One thing I think about when I work with educators in technology poor (and highly resource constrained) schools in Nairobi: at what point will the educators and students who are living in less 'technologized' schools be the only humans who remember what it means to be human? This will be the new Indigenous wisdom.
Becca! Hi :) -- and thank you for reading and writing. I love this line of yours: "I wonder how bots can be the stage crew supporting connections with more-than-human nature AND the human-human connections that are nurtured by nature." What worries me is that the entities that have the power to engineer more thoughtful augmentations of human wisdom are being incentivized to do the opposite. In the face of that, I feel like all I can do is name what I see and try to sound the alarm, and point people to great resources like yours! But the stakes are so so high . . .
So high indeed. Existential, one might argue.
So.many.thoughts.and.questions. Thank you Sam for continuing to share this story and deep reflections on this messy place.
And, you know where I'm going to go with this, given my focus on nature-based education - I wonder how bots can be the stage crew supporting connections with more-than-human nature AND the human-human connections that are nurtured by nature. In the diagram, this is in the upper right quadrant -- and I am excited about its possibility. AND...I have seen so much to be concerned about in terms of our capacity to deal with not knowing who or what we are as humans. This is exactly what I worry about: 'Play that out over a longer time horizon, Vallor warns, and what we’ll get is not a cure for what ails us, but an “evolving and troubled relationship with the machines we have built as mirrors to tell us who we are, when we ourselves don’t know.”' And what does this mean about our capacity to empathize with non-human nature?
One thing I think about when I work with educators in technology poor (and highly resource constrained) schools in Nairobi: at what point will the educators and students who are living in less 'technologized' schools be the only humans who remember what it means to be human? This will be the new Indigenous wisdom.
Some related reflections from awhile back... https://open.substack.com/pub/beccakatz/p/learning-in-nature-backward?r=1ji450&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Becca! Hi :) -- and thank you for reading and writing. I love this line of yours: "I wonder how bots can be the stage crew supporting connections with more-than-human nature AND the human-human connections that are nurtured by nature." What worries me is that the entities that have the power to engineer more thoughtful augmentations of human wisdom are being incentivized to do the opposite. In the face of that, I feel like all I can do is name what I see and try to sound the alarm, and point people to great resources like yours! But the stakes are so so high . . .