Alan Jacobs

Tech CEO asks
Chatbot why it is frozen.
Chatbot: “You’re frozen.”

The other day I wrote, “Chatbots’ brains don’t have a right hemisphere.” Several people — surprisingly many — have asked me to expand on that. But I dunno: expanding on it feels like a very left-hemisphere thing to do. 

My advice for the new Archbishop of Canterbury | Rowan Williams: 

It might sound odd to approach Easter thinking about fear. But it’s striking that the earliest gospel finishes by telling us that the women who came to the tomb of Jesus and found it empty initially ‘said nothing because they were afraid’. Nothing is going to be the same again: being afraid is the most natural reaction. We are all on the back foot: the ‘cultural Christian’, who likes to have a little bit of Christian decor in the house; the Christian nationalist, who wants non-Christians to know their place; the liberal Anglican, who wants everyone to feel comfortably at home. If what is said to Mary and what is done on Easter Day are indeed world-changing matters, we do well to be apprehensive. Only then can we begin to see just what we are to be thankful for. Release. Transformation. 

The key point about all these “high agency” people is that they’re agentic in relation to existing institutions and human beings but mimetic in relation to money. They do whatever money wants. They want to be money. They put money where their mouth is. And it talks. 

Today in the noon Good Friday service our parish choir sang quite beautifully two powerful anthems I hadn’t heard before:

• “Crux fidelis” — by Sarah Macdonald
• ”Were You There?” — as arranged by Bob Chilcott

(Of course I know “Were You There?” but not this arrangement of it) 

Saving the sento

Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom - Ars Technica:

So why did Sweden pivot? In an email to Undark, Linda Fälth, a researcher in teacher education at Linnaeus University, wrote that the “decision to reinvest in physical textbooks and reduce the emphasis on digital devices” was prompted by several factors, including questions around whether the digitalization of classrooms had been evidence-based. “There was also a broader cultural reassessment,” Fälth wrote. “Sweden had positioned itself as a frontrunner in digital education, but over time concerns emerged about screen time, distraction, reduced deep reading, and the erosion of foundational skills such as sustained attention and handwriting.”

If indeed Gen Z are turning to the Book of Common Prayer, I know a book that might help them understand its rich history.