It has occurred to me that I actually despise a lot of the internet right now. You go onto any website and it’s an aggravating experience.
You start reading then the screen goes dark and a prompt to sign up to a mailing list appears.
You click “maybe later”, because you’re never allowed to say “go away forever”. Then a banner pops up to ask for your consent for cookies.
You can’t go two seconds without being swamped at all stages with ads poking in at the corner, auto play video screaming. For some reason my cookies assume I’m impotent and need hair treatments.
To make things worse, now you have almost no idea if what you are reading was actually written by a human person. The graphics are likely generated, too. The sense of craft is gone. It’s a huge problem for education and for tourism.
It could be better!
What makes a teacher great?
Today’s WordPress prompt was “what makes a teacher great?” I might be going a bit ham with it, but my job is essentially education. Though it’s paid better and my students tend to behave themselves, even if they do smoke and drink in class occasionally.
How it relates to education
Why I think it’s relevant is that none of my teachers were trying to sell me things. None of them wanted me to do anything except leave their room with an appreciation for what they offered, and have an idea for how great an education is. While also not happy-slapping. If you know, you know.
I especially loved how human centric it was. Many of them were old school and barely knew technology beyond projectors. Even then, they occasionally burned those.
*which I had a stock image of a projector on fire here*
Education is the lighting of a fire. It brightens up everything. It’s the process of taking the fuel from the world to create yourself an almighty torch to light your own way and create a path for others.
It should not have an intermediate figure who wants to insert themselves and gatekeep you with payment in money or attention.
Bad website experiences and AI are connected
Capitalism seems to be the likely culprit. I’ve not actually read Marx properly but I’m sure he wrote a bunch about alienation.
People are separated from an appreciation of what they do by the needs of Capital. In other words, the people who own the buildings and the tools, who receive a huge share of the profit, benefit from the people who do the work being separated from it. This separation is a disconnection and it means people care less in their work.
Modern management insists people are supposed to care about their work as if they are not alienated from the process and the final product, but modern management also insists labour is as efficient as possible and uses up to date tools to get the fastest result.
This has made its way into education.
Poor kids
I feel awful for kids these days who are expected to do so much at schools while not learning necessary skills to improve themselves and develop further.
Others have written on this subject that a better degree, but my overall vibe is that modern educational standards are struggling globally to create the next generation of great thinkers and great writers, and likely great engineers and scientists, too. It’s creating the next generation of great vending machine users.
Bad websites
As websites are a sort of Capital, since they are a site of production, like a factory, there is an increasing desire to monetise every part of them, via the selling of data. This is why there’s cookies banners everywhere.
As getting clicks comes with a cost, that must be recouped by maximising them. This is why websites love people subscribing to mailing lists and pop it on screen. This would be fine if it only happened once in a day, but it’s virtually every website, every time. (Except this website, which I don’t even know how you’d subscribe to it and I am in no rush to push it, subscribe if you really love it I guess? And can figure it out, better to follow me elsewhere).
As website owners have huge demands, junior marketers use AI to generate everything and barely fact check or improve it stylistically. After all, it’s made of the combined style of everything ever written, how could it be bad?
The Delight that is the Street Historians, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boss (Me)
This is Edinburgh Street Historians and we do not use AI or ads on this site at all. We follow the Golden Rule – treat everyone as you’d like to be treated – and ads and AI is not a treat. It is terrible sludge. We will neither beg for your email address nor sell your data. We’re just here to sell walking tours of Edinburgh on a free tour/ Pay What You Think It’s Worth basis.
Some may call it ridiculous to reject the technology which might get rid of work entirely, but I’d call those people grim utopians with a strange idea for what humanity is supposed to do. We are supposed to tell each other stories and take each other beautiful places. I believe tour guiding is amongst the oldest professions as people have always wanted to know where they are and what is good to eat.
And once again, I will not try to sell you anything. Except walking tours if you happen to be in Edinburgh.
The writer of this piece is getting more attractive with every word he writes.
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