“Tools provide a path, a context, and almost an excuse for developing enlightenment, but no tool ever contained it or can dispense it. Cesare Pavese observed: to know the world we must construct it. In other words, we make not just to have, but to know. But the having can happen without most of the knowing taking place.” – Alan Kay, 1993
Technology has always shaped how we think. I’ve written before about how technology turned me into a constructivist thinker. In short, that means I believe we create the world we live in. However, I am also a systems thinker, and what that means is that I understand that we are constrained by systems of technology, knowledge, culture, and practice even if the systems are constructions.
Over the last 50 years, we’ve watched the gradual democratization of technology. AI takes this to a new level. What was once a domain dominated by a technical elite, however, now risks becoming the domain of those who have the critical thinking skills to use AI tools to solve complex problems and drive new innovations.
Ted Nelson, in his manifesto Computer Lib/Thinking Machines, envisioned computers as “Thinkertoys” to liberate us from rigid, industrial-age systems. “We do not make important decisions, we should not make delicate decisions, serially and irreversibly. Rather, the power of the computer display (and its computing and filing support) must be so crafted that we may develop alternatives, spin out their complications and interrelationships, and visualize these upon a screen.” Using Thinkertoys effectively requires critical thinking skills.
However, Bill Gates’s letter to hobbyists in 1974 pointed us to an alternative future where someone else would code for us, because that was where the money was. We traded flexibility for convenience. Applications became our gatekeepers. For most of us, the ability to shape our digital environment vanished.
We accepted the software we were given because learning to code was too difficult and too costly in time. Most importantly, we adapted to their logic instead of thinking critically about alternative possibilities.
We allow ourselves to get into traps largely driven by applications and systems over which we have no control. Most of the pain I hear from computer users stems directly from technology that fences them in, doesn’t work right, or both. Whether we’re talking about web applications that frustrate us or corporate systems that undermine productivity, we are at the mercy of those who speak the language of machines.
In parallel to this world, there’s been a hacker world of coders that have developed their own software to do exactly what they wanted to do. However, this takes a level of expertise and commitment of time that most of us don’t have.
AI will change that calculus. For the last couple of months, I have been meme coding using an AI and it’s amazing to me how fast I have progressed while developing a relatively complex program.
A few weeks ago, a professor at another institution told me that he had created customizations to his learning management system using its API and meme coding. Learning management systems are one of those inflexible apps that we struggle with as we try to create the best online learning environments for our students.
This caused a lightbulb to go off in my head. Maybe we were finally entering the world that Ted Nelson had envisioned. This was a world where anyone could create whatever functionality they needed in a computer without the limitations of their coding skills or by relying on someone else’s coding skills.
However, even if this becomes simple, it’s still going to require sets of skills because you do have to know how to get what you want. This is a logical puzzle, not a technical one, and one that even many low-level programmers struggle with.
Master programmers understand that they are mediating between human and machine worlds and design software that serves the user. However, there are lot of programmers who simply must meet a deadline for a logic imposed by those who understand neither computers nor people.
Currently, I am debugging a portion of my application and, even though the AI is helpful, it does not explore all possible pathways and often gets stuck in a loop. I need to know the right questions to ask to get it out of that loop.
That process involves a combination of logical and lateral thinking. It also opens the door to more complex problems than simply getting the code to work right.
At the same time, I am dealing with students who are having trouble following rather straightforward directions and thinking critically about their own work. The real deficit in their learning is not computing or coding, it’s critical thinking.
This has always been the Achilles’ heel of education based on an industrial model. If the primary purpose is feeding students through a system, the easiest way to do that is down a straight path. The easiest way to go down a straight path is not to encourage them to think critically or creatively.
I am excited about the prospect of a maker world where I can customize my computing (and real world) existence around my needs. However, power should not be concentrated around even an elite characterized by critical thinking skills. If we can teach people to think like makers, to design rather than merely consume, we transform technology from a set of fences into a field of possibilities.
This is the real digital divide: not access to computing, but critical thinking abilities. Access to computing is a technical problem. Access to critical thinking is societal one. Without it, AI will not liberate us. It will deepen the gap between those who can shape technology and those who are shaped by it. This is the real threat of AI that no one is talking about.
It is time to get beyond being users of AI. We need to be architects of a maker world. There is an urgent need to integrate AI tools into our learning and work processes but do so in a critical manner that teaches thinking over replacement.
We must overcome the idea that we are subject to the technologies that given to us, and that includes AI. I don’t teach my students to accept AI. I teach them to critique it and use it to critique themselves.
We stand on threshold of a maker world where you can call up digital tools to do anything you want and build a digital world customized around you. This is a truly constructed world. That’s the world I want to leave to my kids and students.
Part I: Democratizing Imagination
Part II: Making Opportunity with AI