#audrey-watters — Public Fediverse posts

🧐 "Perhaps what we need is not technology training but technology un-training – the former is cognitive surrender; the latter will be the only way we can actually pursue learning. Of course, what anti-democratic billionaire technoauthoritarian would ever pay for that?" — Audrey Watters is spot on, as usual. 👇

Read full post: https://ver.onl/sam

#education #edtech #ai #learning #medialiteracy #AudreyWatters #errs #errssocial

And yes, next, I'll read #tressiemcmillancottom essay in response. Thx to #audreywatters for link.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/opinion/charlie-kirk-media-truth-trump.html?ref=2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

Please bro, we’re so close to AGI, just $20,000,000,000 more bro

Via Audrey Watters’s newsletter

#AI #audreyWatters #hypeCycle #LLM #samAltman

"What we mean when we talk about AI in education is necessarily ideological. "

#edtech #ai #llm #chatgpt #audreywatters #education #teaching #learning

https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-ai-in-education/?ref=second-breakfast-newsletter

Dedication in the book "Teaching Machines. The History of Personalized Learning" by #audreywatters which I am very much looking forward to reading:

For #teachers ... for *human* teachers, not teaching machines

While there’s nothing particularly new in this post by Bill Gates, it’s nevertheless a good one to send to people who might be interested in the impact that AI is about to have on society.
Gates compares AI agents to Clippy which, he says, was merely a bot. After going through all of the advantages there will be to AI agents acting on your […]

https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/11/09/bill-gates-on-why-ai-agents-are-better-than-clippy/

Audrey Watters, formerly the ‘Cassandra’ of edtech, is now writing about health, nutrition, and fitness technologies at Second Breakfast. It’s great, I’m a paid subscriber.
In this article, she looks at the overlap between her former and current fields, comparing and contrasting coaches and educators with algorithms. While I […]

https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/09/28/personalisation-is-something-that-humans-do/

Things are looking up, the report includes an #audreywatters quote, always a good antidote to #edtechsolutionism

"As Audrey Watters traces in her book Teaching Machines, a long
list of technological breakthroughs, whether televisions, various iterations
of computers or, more recently, the mobile internet, artificial intelligence
(AI) and metaverses, have been held up as final and exultant forms for
education.42

https://www.unesco.org/en/digital-education/ed-tech-tragedy

#edtech #education #audreywatters

This article reviews a book entitled A Web of Our Own Making by Antón Barba-Kay which reminded me a lot of an issue of Audrey Watters’ Second Breakfast newsletter about the templated body.
What does it mean for there to be multiple, constructed realities. When everyone has a smartwatch and is tracking everything, does that make their life both qualitatively and […]

https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/08/22/reality-and-the-templated-life/

Can technology replace teachers?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/07/can-technology-replace-teachers-google

https://kognity.com/resources/technology-vs-teachers-can-technology-replace-teachers/

There is a saying in journalism that for every headline that ends in a question mark the answer is no.

And for me, every bit of edtech solutionism Audrey Watters has something to say.

https://edtechhub.org/2022/04/21/personalised-learning/

#education #edtech #audreywatters

Adam Greenfield wrote a thread this morning on Mastodon in which he referenced Ivan Illich’s call for conviviality. This was also referenced in a post by Audrey Watters which was shared a few minutes later in my timeline by Aaron Davis. Such synchronicity is, of course, entirely random but meshed well with my state of mind this morning. I find it interesting that Audrey thinks it’s ridiculous to think that Mastodon is “what’s next” and instead looks to email. For what it’s worth, I see the Fediverse as being a lot like email, actually. Given that she’s got a brain and experience several times the size of mine, I’d love it if she wrote more about this… It’s easy to look at the world right now and focus on the shit… The Republican takeover of the House. The economy. The way my body feels after running 6.85 miles on Sunday morning and then sitting in the car for 2+ hours on the drive home. The implosion of Twitter. The ridiculousness of suggesting Mastodon is “what’s next.” And so on. I mean, I have lots of thoughts on all of these, particularly the Twitter and Mastodon brouhaha. I read an email newsletter that referenced a Twitter thread in which Alexis Madrigal argued that Twitter, at least in its original manifestation, was for “word people.” I quite like that framework, and it’s helpful in showcasing how Facebook and now TikTok really would rather the ascendant influencers be picture people. TV people, even. It’s time to pull out ‘Tools for Conviviality’, perhaps, for a re-read, because I’m loathe to make the argument that email is, in fact, where we find technological conviviality these days. But that’s the direction I’m considering taking the argument. If I were to write about it and think about it more, that is. Source: The Week in Review: What’s Good | Audrey Watters

https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2022/11/21/convivial-social-networks/