Nobody is born knowing this stuff. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner. If it’s not obvious to them, it’s not obvious. A computer is a means to an end. The person you’re helping probably cares mostly about the end. This is reasonable. Their knowledge of the computer is grounded in what they…

>I could see some real value in reaching out to people and departments on a regular basis to see what things are eating up their time and happiness. That data could drive continuous improvement for core systems. We ought to know if core systems are not working for large groups and we should fix that.…

The valiant and resolute band of travelers I thought I was leading toward a much-hoped-for destination turned out instead to be more like convicts in a chain gang, forced under threat of punishment to move along a rough path leading nobody knew where and down which they could see hardly more than a few steps…

>The greater mobility of steam thus enabled the British cotton industry to develop a cheaper and more obedient workforce. It helped create a different kind of relationship between two groups of people: those who owned the mills and those who worked in them.  >…the “suffering of the negative,” as Boggs called it—the negative dialectics of…

The secret heart of every panopticon is not the all-seeing-eye, but the confessional. Like a god, the machine already knows what we’ve done. We confess to reclaim our own voices, or sometimes in search of grace—though in the machine, grace is only available to some people, until we make it available to none. The gears…

>A teacher who makes their children feel bad will struggle to teach them anything. But the job of a teacher is to push students beyond what they think they can do. As Deborah Ball and Francesca Forzani have argued, to teach effectively we may have to suppress our instinctive reactions, and our preferences. This may…

> Learning, it seems, is optimized for both humans and machines when we succeed around 85% of the time. [source](https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2022/07/05/85-percent-rule/)

> The object of the game is to come up with the most entertaining and thought-provoking descriptions of hypothetical objects from different near-, medium-, and long-term futures. Each round, players collectively generate a creative prompt by playing a card game. This prompt outlines the kind of future that the thing-to-be-imagined comes from, specifies what part…

> as educators, if we are setting students assignments that can be answered by AI Transformers, are we really helping students learn? There are many better ways to assess for learning: constructive feedback, peer assessment, teachback. If Transformer AI systems have a lasting influence on education, maybe that will come from educators and policy makers…

> It is 5 AM and you have a paper due in 3 hours. After staying up all night, you have only managed to type up 5 pages of the 8 page requirement, and you are beginning to run out of ideas. Never fear, Text Inflator is here to save your sanity. > > Paste…