logoalt Hacker News

anileated01/21/20250 repliesview on HN

It is much more recent than the Greeks. McLuhan, for example, had some good points* about how writing/reading is different (and indeed in some ways worse?) than oral tradition, and how it influences even our social interactions and mindset. Film is different yet again (partially has to do with its linearity IIRC).

So it’s not like “kids these days”, no. To be honest, I don’t know how generative AI tools, which arguably take away most of the “create” and “learn” parts, are relevant to the question of differences between different mediums and how those mediums influence how we create and learn. (There are ML-based tools that can empower creativity, but they don’t tend to be advertised as “AI” because they are a mostly invisible part of some creative tool.)

What is potentially relevant is how interacting with a particular kind of generative ML tool (the chatbot) for the purposes of understanding the world can be bringing some parts of human oral tradition (though lacking communication with actual humans, of course) and associated mental states.

* See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#Movable_type and his most famous work