This Week in The Preamble: Why the future of AI depends on what we keep human
Each week, our team digs into one subject — chosen by you — and asks the questions that matter. What’s true? How did we get here? And what does it say about us? This week, we dive into AI.
Keeping Grit in the Gears
Friends, Johannes Gutenberg didn’t just invent a faster way to copy words. He built a machine that multiplied ideas. It changed who had access to them, who profited from them, and who was punished when power felt threatened. That’s our entry point this week, because AI is not just a clever tool meant to make our lives easier.
The Beauty of Friction
There’s a particular fantasy that keeps showing up in our culture: the fantasy of frictionlessness. The belief that if we remove enough obstacles, life will finally glide. No waiting in line. No awkward small talk.
The Next Enlightenment
Johannes Gutenberg spent years cloistered in secrecy, perfecting a machine that could uniformly stamp letters onto a page. If his idea c…
From Floppy Disks to Fake News
In elementary school, we had to purchase floppy disks for computer class. Our teachers would tell us that Wikipedia was not a trusted source of information and that we should be careful about where we got our information. By the time I entered middle school, floppy disks were obsolete, and Wikipedia was widely becoming a trusted starting point for any t…
Other featured letters:
The Kindest Words
It Shouldn’t Have to Happen to You for You to Care
The View from Across the Atlantic
Recommended Reading
AI is here, and there’s so much to learn. This reading guide from The Preamble offers more than a books and podcasts for readers who want to go deeper. It includes resources to help kids as well. To download, upgrade to become a paid subscriber.
