Stop Shop-speak

8 September 2026 Leave a comment

I have heard comments from bench scientists that what is called “science” in the popular press isn’t really science. I assume they say that because the content of popular science articles does not dwell on the essential minutiae of research lab procedures. One might reasonably suggest that an abstract of research, with technical terms given metaphorical conversion, would be more universally understandable, hence, popular. Science academics, on the other hand, not only fail to see the value in delivering their discourse in a simpler form, but they also brutalize the language to a degree that makes it painful for audiences other than science academics.

For me, wincing at the rattling of mispronounced Latin is enough of a distraction to cause me to leave the hall. English is the richest and most nuanced of the Western languages. Listening to English reduced to the level of a fourth-grade classroom conversation, by anyone, strongly biases me against whatever they may be trying to say. Often, such abuse so obscures the content as to make what is being spoken meaningless.

Adding to the seemingly arrogant obfuscation of the material’s delivery come the speech viruses: ‘ah,’ ‘um,’ ‘right,’ ‘so’ and the monotonous ‘and.’ Has it not occurred to the great universities and smallest colleges to expect their teaching staff to exhibit successful completion of a middle school speech class? Do presenters even go over their presentations out loud before presenting?

Here are three mantras for good speaking: Be clear. Be concise. Know your audience. This alone is not demanding. It does require Theory of Mind, but then we develop that cognitive capacity at about the time we enter first grade.

No scientist should look down on science for the masses. I read articles ranging from virology to astrophysics in Scientific American and even The New York Times. I enjoy them, and they help expand my worldview.

I’m a retired English teacher. This essay is over the head of a fourth-grader, perhaps. It is trying to make a point with some immured post-docs and lofty professors. Jargon is for in-house. It is meant to keep outsiders from understanding. Outside presentations require effective speaking.

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Can Humanity Be Digitized?

10 November 2025 Leave a comment

In the years before AI, when search engines simply scanned the Web, I told my tenth grade lit students that I’d give A’s to students whose analytical essays on a piece revealed something we hadn’t discussed in class and for which they had produced clear textual evidence. My principal suggested I was giving out too few A’s. I pointed out that I didn’t give grades, they were earned. I showed students ways to approach literature and assess the strength of the conclusions at which they arrived. My students earned plenty of A’s, mostly, I think, because they felt really good about what they were writing and how ‘smart’ they felt.

I wonder how an AI system would handle a request for an, as yet, unearth thesis in – say – the Ramayana. Of course, the AI’s ‘class discussion’ must have been very extensive, but under these or any other circumstances, could the bot postulate and support a novel conclusion?

Classical reportage covers who, what, where, when and, to some extent how. The why of things may only be taken from the heard words of someone other than the reporter. The good reporter would not have speculated. Incorporating events external to the reported incident and used as an analysis would also have been opinion, as in this writing.

If AI systems are collecting, and when appropriate, citing existing data, then they’re simply doing research. Citing sources would be good. Citing would provide some basis for authenticating the factual quality of the information. What about the intangibles? On what rubrics can AI systems evaluate the strength or weakness on ranges in the nonphysical realm? How can they scale loosely defined abstractions, such as liberty, respect or love?

My students had the words in the book, the strategies I had shared with them and 16 years or so of gathering data and experiencing feelings. They put it together. Their real intelligence allowed them outstanding insights – insights and the skill at arriving at them that I hope they have carried into life.

Asimov’s writing from half a century ago mocks the self-accolades of AI engineering. STEM was once a theme in the humanities. Now it is trying to generate its own humanity. Will it supplant us along the way? Are we the primitives in this evolutionary leap into Artificial Humanities? And what does that even mean? Can humanity be digitized?

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This article suggests that far from supporting creative discovery in its own function, it stifles such thinking in its users’ generative cognition. “How A.I. and Social Media Contribute to ‘Brain Rot,’” New York Times, Nov. 10, 2025 [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/technology/personaltech/ai-social-media-brain-rot.html]

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Literacy for the Information Age

21 September 2025 Leave a comment

The radio has informed me that Minneapolis Schools will be putting, more perhaps, emphasis on the teaching of literacy. In our inundation of marketed information, bromides such as “literacy for the information age” present a puzzle for the close reader or listener. What does it all mean? It sounds good.

First is the matter of the flooded environment. There are so many impressive words, catchy phrases and glib statements – market-speak – around that both the audience of such noise and its producers simply take it as the norm. This is how it should sound, because it is how it sounds. A fairly circular understanding of reality. I like to think of it as ‘surround sound.’ Our verbal reality is that by which we are surrounded in all directions, as if floating inside a beach ball of sound, the walls made of clever but vapid words, phrases and statements. The language of these walls defines our new grammar – the syntax and lexicon of a new spoken and printed reality. And the new language only superficially resembles the old. For example, a word such as “iconic” is now used much like the word “very.” It is simply a hollow intensifier with misty connotations of the classical, classiness and – thanks to Apple Computer’s accurate use of the root word, “icon” – digital1. Do we remember the original meaning of the word “icon?” What does that say about an iconic new idea?

So here we are inside this planet sized ball of clever, if vapid, verbiage. We look out at it, and if we are thinking people, we ask of any one statement, “What does that actually mean?” The reasoning is typically open-ended or circular. Statements from the same source are often just highly polished contradictions. And many statements seem inconsistent with our experienced reality.

We return to the promotion of a new emphasis on teaching literacy, “literacy for the information age.” How can literacy be considered more important now than it has been for the last hundred years, as the speaker for Minneapolis Schools suggests? The phrase sounds good. Is education policy to be based on a skewed, empty catchphrase?

Perhaps electronic text documents actually use a different dialect of English that uses a different syntax and a different lexicon. I have to admit, it often seems as if they do. I had thought it was a case of the producers’ use of social media-speak and thumb-writing; they were just semi-literate. Perhaps, this is the very form of English in which we need to be fluent in order to function well in this “information age.” It is not however; it is simply a corruption of the language.

Literacy is as important as ever in this “disinformation age.” The literate demanding of clarity and precision helps us see through the glittering spin of cleaver words and phrases. Literacy should be, as it always has been, the ability to see what the words, alone and in complex combinations represent, not just how they sound.2 The utterance, “Literacy for the information age,” is a misrepresentation of an essential understanding of any education.

The saddest thing about the idea that reading literacy is especially important in the current environs is that we do so little of it. So many more of the words that are directed at us are spoken, mostly recorded. Spoken language seldom exceeds a middle school level of literacy, even among highly educated people. Reading varied and challenging text is, on the other hand, how we develop not just a broader lexicon. It also increases cognitive strength; it helps build dendrites. When we read broadly, we become smarter.

1      Have you thought about the source of the word digital? Perhaps we should use the term “the binary age” in reference to computing code. Is it because we use our ten digits on a keyboard. We use two thumbs to “text” something.

2      I hasten to make the allowance the sound of language in poetry and even prose. Here is the place for the subtle to be enlightened and enshrined in therich sound of the spoken words, where the words tap emotions as well as deepening lucidity.

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