Through linguistic offshoots, such as writing, we are able to practice a unique phenomenon: exbodiment , in which byproducts of our cognition can be captured, stored, shared, and passed through generations.

The writing is getting better. The ideas are getting worse. There’s a new genre of essay that other academics reading this will instantly recognize, a clumsy collaboration between students and Silicon Valley. I call it glittering sludge .

“Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

By mistaking language as merely a tool that’s a means to an end—little different from a spatula—too many people have lost sight of the fact that understanding language provides the basis of smart thinking.

Artificial intelligence is already killing off important parts of the human experience. But one of its most consequential murders—so far—is the demise of a longstanding rite of passage for students worldwide: an attempt to synthesize complex information and condense it into compelling analytical prose. It’s a training ground for the most quintessen... See more

But this isn’t about phone numbers or navigation. It’s about how technology clearly changes our minds. And there is a risk that today’s siphoning of young brains into phones and laptops isn’t just happening with maps and digits, but with critical thinking and complex language.

Language is humanity’s superpower. Without it, culture, cultural evolution, global cooperation, and the accumulation of knowledge across generations would be impossible. Through linguistic offshoots, such as writing, we are able to practice a unique phenomenon: exbodiment , in which byproducts of our cognition can be captured, stored, shared, and p... See more