Amid the breathless techno-optimist awe of artificial intelligence—and ahistorical dismissal of its novelty—it is easy to forget that the current crises of reading and writing are unprecedented in degree, but not in kind. “After Words” considers what’s actually different about today’s information overload and whether we’ve been postliterate for far... See more

after the generation of students who ChatGPT’ed their way through high school and college arrive on the job market, once society is saturated with people who cannot publicly speak or write or dialogue, and once the effects of intellectual passivity and mindless entertainment are fully felt, the world will look again to the humanities.

Like mass media and mass commerce, the average university is on the brink of collapse. Its structure is a rotting legacy of the Industrial Age. For years, anybody who wanted to learn on their own lacked the means to do so. Now, anybody with an internet connection has access to information. Harvard and Stanford will be okay, but dark days are ahead... See more