my latest notes and explores briefly a human aspect of the “ai” moment: the current erosion of trust some instructors are experiencing.
as is my wont, i’m trying to get beyond the talking points, in this case, the false dichotomy about “embracing or fearing” machine learning applications.
pax inter spinas
been a while. but after a visit with family, me and the kids headed west to this dry mesic prairie remnant just past the terminal moraine in the driftless area (where the last glaciation didn’t touch). mostly situated on a dramatic hill, this prairie was grazed but not plowed, according to the wdnr’s website. lots of native species still inhabiting, a small oak proudly taking up the hill’s crest as its home.
many first time id’s and a few old friends hanging out. first id’s of wood lily, seneca snakeroot, blue-eyed grass, flowering spurge, prairie phlox.
first day that a walk in the sun got uncomfortably hot this year. could have sat on the hilltop all day long.
a.
bright lamp of the hill
bolt upright
in dane cty breeze
b.
above the valley
delicate
puccoon blossom stands
as some of you may know from things i’ve said, i’m the current academic integrity director at marquette university. it’s been a very active year in the office with the release of ‘generative a.i.’ chatbots to the general public. among other things.
but this new essay, thankfully, is a broader reflection on the nature of integrity in higher education generally, based in my first year’s observations and lessons learned. it explores integrity in three “keys”: medieval monastic (because it’s me), aristotelian/thomistic (which was a new endeavor for me), and existential (to round things out).
even if you’re not in higher ed at all, there are still reflections on integrity as a virtue (in the greek sense of “excellence”) in life generally here that could be of interest.
pax inter spinas
ps. included here are some images of wild geranium from this spring that didn’t get on here.
hey all. if you’ve gotten updates from me long enough, you’ll know that, in the midst of lots of hikes and plants and scholarly musings on medieval monasticism, sometimes things get theological/spiritual here.
if you’re game for that, i’ve got a new “eco-theological” essay out on focolare media’s website today. you can read it there or listen to me read it as there’s an audio option.
i’ve been looking for a place to use st. gregory the great’s observation that “the earth has given birth to us all; we are right to call her our mother,” and this is it!
did our early-spring visit to seminary woods at st. francis seminary in st. francis, wisconsin again last weekend. one of our two old-growth stands here in milwaukee county.
trout lilies and early buttercups coming up in all the usual spots; skunk cabbage leafing out in the stream bed and low areas, mayapple along the trail; a barred owl snoozing up in the leafless canopy. a good day.
a.
great horns craned to scratch
vernal sun
shines on buttercups
it’s difficult to see b/c i don’t have a good camera, but there is in fact a great horned owl toward the center (bit to the right) of this photo about a third of the way down.
this preserve is 652 acres donated by the meyers a ways back. there’s oak savanna, a wood, wetland, and small agricultural land that the nature conservancy is sprucing up back into prairie. they had just done a burn on some of the restored prairie before we arrived.
the morning was turning from sprinkly to downright rainy by the time we got there, and the rain only got heavier. but an enjoyable walk anyhow, and in ways even more so for all the wet. willows and hazels putting out catkins, lots of fungus, serious lichen colonies on the shagbark hickory, sandhills calling once again, and, most surprisingly, two swans flew into the wetland as we watched them from the wood.
first id of what i think is bark mycena (the tiniest mushroom you ever did see).
a.
downwind from the burn
bird partners
two white rafts enmarshed
b.
log fungal splendors
all ruddy—
the shins growing wet
oh man, there’s been so much family health stuff going on! been a bit of a challenge to get out for a walk around the neighborhood let alone hiking hither and yon. took the chance on thursday to set out off west with my dad to get some walking in.
started with a light rain as we set out on i-94 but was a steady fall by the late morning when we left our second site. worth it, and a cold ride home.
paradise springs is a spring site that goes back well over a hundred years with a spring house, dam, and mill that are all now in ruins. quite a place though—so much water coming out of the main spring; wild. a nice morning jaunt, none too strenuous but a nice little wood and pond. dad happened on a small community of chipmunks behind the spring house that were having quite a time running up and down the hill in back. lots of chatter.
on our way to the car, we noticed a birch that had immensely thick bark going 20-30 ft off the ground. by far the oldest birch i’ve seen. in awe.
first id (methinks) of dust lichen.
a.
grass and moss along
the cobbles
gray missing of work
b.
so much springwater—
the silly
things we’re surprised by
c.
century’s portal
wet stone scent
chipmunks’ secret life
birch bark, friends. birch bark.
though i don’t talk much about it on here, i’m a teacher in higher ed. and i’ve been thinking a lot, given my duties, about the intersection of so-called “gen ai” (i’d prefer something like “probabilistic information processors,” which is less sleek but more truthful) and the human person. i think about these things from a critical perspective informed by folks like jacques ellul, marcel gabriel, and ivan illich. i’m also very glad for dr. emily bender and timnit gebru’s work in this area.
anyhow, recently i’ve had a couple things published on this, and i’m happy to be able to provide some countervailing measure to the current dominant discourse. basically, both “ai” boosters and doom-sayers all assume premises in their arguments about the intrinsic good of efficiency, quantitative productivity, automation, machines’ presence in human life, and the computational model of the human mind (not to mention what on earth to do about bodies!) that make their differences not that substantial. for my part, i’m concerned with the limits of what and who we are as humans, because it is those limits that make us precisely who we are. i’m also concerned with how technique (the rationalization of processes for ever-greater efficiency) forms and shapes us, reducing our capacities and ability to see, in general.
in this “ai” moment, this problematic conditioning (that machines are better at things than we are, that if we can make use of a tool to make something easier for ourselves we should) affects more of who we think we are than prior roll-outs from silicon valley. a key factor here is what gabriel calls “power at one remove”—the ability to discern for ourselves when it is in our genuine best interest to use tools for the power they provide us and when it’s not. this, he says, is what used to be called wisdom.
anyhow, i could go on, as you might have figure out by now. but dealing with this in various capacities is part of what has led me to need some distance from the digital world in general (see the sparseness of posts over the last few months). not the whole deal, but part of it. just needing space in my life from machines in general.
anyhow, if you made it this far, here‘s an essay of mine that’s more philosophically based that came out in conversations in jesuit higher education a bit ago, and i also had a part in an article from the milwaukee journal sentinel that i contributed to in a more practical capacity, though i see now that it’s behind the paper’s paywall, unfortunately. maybe you can still get to it here?
i’m guessing more will be forthcoming. 🙂
hook lake bog is a soft bog in a glacial pocket in dane cty. as the wdnr website explains, the lake is almost completely filled in at this point, with bog, meadow, and tamarack wood along with floating sedge mats slowly making the spot land again. other habitats surrounding.
my brother and i parked alongside the road and walked into the site b/t two houses. a little encouragement from a 6yo playing in his backyard and a turn into a small wood and we came upon hook lake. the description was right; there was open water around but lots of sedge mats, some big enough to look like the mainland, some small floating islands. we choose a couple islands close to shore and hopped along some tussocks. when we got on—after a misstep that landed my brother’s leg into the bogmud above the knee (no waders here…)—we found to our delight that it was a serious quaking bog. the ground rippled beneath our feet, and when the other person jumped the whole mat undulated with land-waves. i’d been on quaking mats before, but not such dramatically obvious ones. a real treat. a whole little world of moss, sedge, and cranberry, getting on toward dusk.
first id of wild cranberry!
a.
making on the mat
a quaking
sea of moss towers
b.
lovely burgundy
spiralled leaves
quiet on the lake
a couple updates for those reading. first, i don’t usually put much personal stuff on here, but my wife and i just bought a house in milwaukee, wisconsin about a month ago. been here eight years, and it feels good to be settling in for real. just to say, things happen but also that’s part of why i haven’t had much time to get out into the unbuilt spaces lately. second, for those enjoying the verse, my second collection of poems, be radiant, is coming out from fernwood press in january, so stay tuned for more info on that front. anyhow:
waubesa wetlands lie in a larger nature conservancy site, a sprawling fen-dominant wetland complex with springs and streams feeding. we walked in and were able to navigate the drier areas, but two steps out into the mud flat along one of the streams put me knee-deep in mud. (had waders on.) so we tramped back around along one of the spring runs instead and sat in the wooded edge before heading on. quiet due to winter and all, dock abundant among the grasses.
a.
the bird calls really
our foot-falls
but for one stray duck
b.
“all the dry grasses,”
snyder said:
but not these grasses
c.
cloud whisps in the sky
my children
gone for christmas break
willow cone gall midge:
disholcaspis gall wasp on oak:
Jacob Riyeff 