The first time you mention "human capital" in the article, you spell it "capitol". I am unaware of any capitol city or building for all human beings. ;-)
I'm adding some groups of people: academic librarians, leaders of academic centers for writing, the deans & provosts these folks report to (!!), faculty development colleagues (who can get this into the hands of faculty), students (!!!).
Hi John! I’m a fan of your work and am excited for this new book. I’m a middle school teacher in a northern suburb of Chicago, and also I’m publishing a book. My book is to help teachers empower students to live the life of writers…that which AI cannot do for them. You’ve left teachers off of your list, and I think we’re actually a critical group to include. I understand everyone you’ve included on your list, but don’t forget me and the other millions of teachers who need your work.
Teachers are given in the core audience that I pitched to the publisher. This list is for the outliers who aren't necessarily interested in that core. Teachers and other school-associate folks are the chief targets for the book.
Make it’s my own ego popping up because I appreciate your work and *I* am a very specific person who needs your perspective. 😅 I hope all these people do read your book and use their knowledge in service of teachers and students.
I'd love to have you come to Town Hall in Seattle. They have a long list of indie book store partners, including Elliott Bay, Third Place, Secret Garden and Phinney Books.
"This would also really impress my mother" almost made me spit my coffee out—enjoyed the overall conceit of this piece, too, as far as its transparency (always a value-add in your writing) and tone. Cannot wait to read this book!
I am "the parent who thinks there is something missing from my child's education." The other day, in a meeting with my daughter's 7th grade teacher, I expressed concern that she doesn't read as much as she used to, and the teacher, who I really like, assured me that this is normal. "I know," I said. "But I don't want her to be normal." As someone who reads more than a normal person--maybe even more than is advisable--I'm wary of imposing my own personal standards for how to live on my children. Raising teenagers today, I think all the time about the act of reading and why, to me, it seems essential. Definitely planning to read this book.
It's interesting to consider what we mean by "normal" and how we respond to that. For sure, I'm wary of substituting my world view for the desires of young people who deserve to have agency over their lives. But my experience in working with first-year college students is that they haven't been given a ton of opportunity or exposure to the kinds of pleasures and power that comes with reading and writing, particularly in school.
It's not that I think reading is some kind of moral good as compared to something else, but it's something that has brought enormous pleasure to my life. We have to give it a chance to take hold, at least.
I agree! With my teenage kids, it seems like a matter of reminding them that they are capable of sustained attention. There weren’t as many distractions for me when I was their age (in part because I was such a weird loner!) I hope I can encourage them to see their capacity for attention as a precious resource. I’m looking forward to reading your book.
Reader Come Home is fantastic, for sure. I cite it in the book as well. I wish I'd been more insistent about these issues earlier. I was naive to think that reading was under threat because I thought the importance of deep reading was so apparent, but there's a lot of folks who seem happy to outsource engagement with the thoughts of others to an LLM.
You got me with the title already. Just ordered your recommendation (thank you!) from a local bookstore, and I look forward to getting my hands on More Than Words when it gets published here.
1) Purchase request submitted through my local public library (and a reminder to all that you, too, can submit library purchase suggestions! A library loan is not a lost sale!).
2) Your description of writing a paper about Tom Wolfe in the style of Tom Wolfe cracked me up. I'm in the middle of reading the journals I kept in high school, and while for the most part they are as terrible as you might imagine, I'm also reminded of several such exercises/stunts I pulled, most of which were equally unappreciated by my teachers. (Our AP English teacher had the habit not only of assigning five paragraph themes but also of correcting you, should you make the grave mistake of varying the construction of the opening of your middle three paragraphs, of crossing out whatever you'd done and replacing it with "First, Second, Third." We did not get along.)
All authors love library requests. They are vital for keeping books around and publishers particularly love to see them. I had a number of other survival strategies when bored by what I was being asked to do in school. Unfortunately, some of them were things like sleeping or, senior year, declaring that I would do no homework at home. If I couldn't do it during school hours, it didn't get done. In a lot of ways I was behaving like a lazy, maybe spoiled kid, but I now recognize someone who was fighting disengagement with the limited tools at my disposal at the time.
John, I can only second your post. I taught English language arts in public schools for 10 years, for my sins, and agree that students should be taught, or helped, to write, rather than how to pass writing assignments. 😥 In other news, I LOVE that you recommended The Tsar of Love and Techno. It's an awesome book 📖.
Independent book store suggestions in Minneapolis-Louise Erdrich's store, Birchbark Books, is a tiny jewel. And her staff's ability to recommend an excellent book choice for any reader is unrivaled. Moon Palace Books is also excellent.
Very interesting perspective in the context of your work. I often try to think about where the technology might be useful, and one of the examples is my post-college job as a paralegal where I was part of a team on a large piece of litigation that involved millions of pages of documents. This was the 1990s so we were indexing them by hand in a DOS-based database, but today with OCR and an LLM you could get very good summaries that could point you in the right direction for a more detailed search. The danger would be over-relying on those summaries because you could miss the most important stuff when it comes to that kind of litigation. But as a way to do at least an initial culling of wheat and chaff it would've been a huge time saver. Ultimately, though, the usefulness of the documents to the case have to be in the hands of experts who can exercise judgment over their relevance. Anyone who would outsource that to an LLM is courting disaster.
The first time you mention "human capital" in the article, you spell it "capitol". I am unaware of any capitol city or building for all human beings. ;-)
I'm adding some groups of people: academic librarians, leaders of academic centers for writing, the deans & provosts these folks report to (!!), faculty development colleagues (who can get this into the hands of faculty), students (!!!).
Hi John! I’m a fan of your work and am excited for this new book. I’m a middle school teacher in a northern suburb of Chicago, and also I’m publishing a book. My book is to help teachers empower students to live the life of writers…that which AI cannot do for them. You’ve left teachers off of your list, and I think we’re actually a critical group to include. I understand everyone you’ve included on your list, but don’t forget me and the other millions of teachers who need your work.
Teachers are given in the core audience that I pitched to the publisher. This list is for the outliers who aren't necessarily interested in that core. Teachers and other school-associate folks are the chief targets for the book.
Make it’s my own ego popping up because I appreciate your work and *I* am a very specific person who needs your perspective. 😅 I hope all these people do read your book and use their knowledge in service of teachers and students.
I'd love to have you come to Town Hall in Seattle. They have a long list of indie book store partners, including Elliott Bay, Third Place, Secret Garden and Phinney Books.
I am super excited to read this book, and just pre-ordered!
Thank you for the link, John!
I loved the "accidental" nature of the piece. I'm a big fan of when someone makes insights out of happenstance.
"This would also really impress my mother" almost made me spit my coffee out—enjoyed the overall conceit of this piece, too, as far as its transparency (always a value-add in your writing) and tone. Cannot wait to read this book!
I am "the parent who thinks there is something missing from my child's education." The other day, in a meeting with my daughter's 7th grade teacher, I expressed concern that she doesn't read as much as she used to, and the teacher, who I really like, assured me that this is normal. "I know," I said. "But I don't want her to be normal." As someone who reads more than a normal person--maybe even more than is advisable--I'm wary of imposing my own personal standards for how to live on my children. Raising teenagers today, I think all the time about the act of reading and why, to me, it seems essential. Definitely planning to read this book.
It's interesting to consider what we mean by "normal" and how we respond to that. For sure, I'm wary of substituting my world view for the desires of young people who deserve to have agency over their lives. But my experience in working with first-year college students is that they haven't been given a ton of opportunity or exposure to the kinds of pleasures and power that comes with reading and writing, particularly in school.
It's not that I think reading is some kind of moral good as compared to something else, but it's something that has brought enormous pleasure to my life. We have to give it a chance to take hold, at least.
I agree! With my teenage kids, it seems like a matter of reminding them that they are capable of sustained attention. There weren’t as many distractions for me when I was their age (in part because I was such a weird loner!) I hope I can encourage them to see their capacity for attention as a precious resource. I’m looking forward to reading your book.
And certainly English teachers.
Maryanne Wolf's 'Reader, Come Home' is also terrific: https://www.juliangirdham.com/blog/attention-2-maryanne-wolf-and-cognitive-patience
Reader Come Home is fantastic, for sure. I cite it in the book as well. I wish I'd been more insistent about these issues earlier. I was naive to think that reading was under threat because I thought the importance of deep reading was so apparent, but there's a lot of folks who seem happy to outsource engagement with the thoughts of others to an LLM.
Yes, same here re naivety!
You got me with the title already. Just ordered your recommendation (thank you!) from a local bookstore, and I look forward to getting my hands on More Than Words when it gets published here.
1) Purchase request submitted through my local public library (and a reminder to all that you, too, can submit library purchase suggestions! A library loan is not a lost sale!).
2) Your description of writing a paper about Tom Wolfe in the style of Tom Wolfe cracked me up. I'm in the middle of reading the journals I kept in high school, and while for the most part they are as terrible as you might imagine, I'm also reminded of several such exercises/stunts I pulled, most of which were equally unappreciated by my teachers. (Our AP English teacher had the habit not only of assigning five paragraph themes but also of correcting you, should you make the grave mistake of varying the construction of the opening of your middle three paragraphs, of crossing out whatever you'd done and replacing it with "First, Second, Third." We did not get along.)
All authors love library requests. They are vital for keeping books around and publishers particularly love to see them. I had a number of other survival strategies when bored by what I was being asked to do in school. Unfortunately, some of them were things like sleeping or, senior year, declaring that I would do no homework at home. If I couldn't do it during school hours, it didn't get done. In a lot of ways I was behaving like a lazy, maybe spoiled kid, but I now recognize someone who was fighting disengagement with the limited tools at my disposal at the time.
John, I can only second your post. I taught English language arts in public schools for 10 years, for my sins, and agree that students should be taught, or helped, to write, rather than how to pass writing assignments. 😥 In other news, I LOVE that you recommended The Tsar of Love and Techno. It's an awesome book 📖.
Very excited for the book — can’t wait to read, recommend, and handsell! (And thank you so much for the link!)
Appreciate the words! Inspires me to commit to writing.
Independent book store suggestions in Minneapolis-Louise Erdrich's store, Birchbark Books, is a tiny jewel. And her staff's ability to recommend an excellent book choice for any reader is unrivaled. Moon Palace Books is also excellent.
I profiled part of your book in my newsletter this week: https://open.substack.com/pub/adjudicatethisandthat/p/decision-writing-and-ai-not-ready
Very interesting perspective in the context of your work. I often try to think about where the technology might be useful, and one of the examples is my post-college job as a paralegal where I was part of a team on a large piece of litigation that involved millions of pages of documents. This was the 1990s so we were indexing them by hand in a DOS-based database, but today with OCR and an LLM you could get very good summaries that could point you in the right direction for a more detailed search. The danger would be over-relying on those summaries because you could miss the most important stuff when it comes to that kind of litigation. But as a way to do at least an initial culling of wheat and chaff it would've been a huge time saver. Ultimately, though, the usefulness of the documents to the case have to be in the hands of experts who can exercise judgment over their relevance. Anyone who would outsource that to an LLM is courting disaster.
I agree - and unfortunately the temptation to over rely on technology is always there. Especially when money is involved.
Yes, the lure of increased "efficiency" is incredibly strong in these contexts, but at what cost?
Skynet?