TLDR: The Coming Age of Aliteracy

For many years, a good deal of digital ink has been spilled about the end of reading. Lately, however, I found compelling the statistics in Rose Horowitch's "The End of Reading is Here," at The Atlantic. I wish it were not behind a paywall. We all need to read it, even if we cannot focus long enough to finish it.

What I began noticing, incrementally, after the turn of the century is coming true: students (and adults) cannot abide focusing long enough to read anything. In 2001, I taught nine challenging texts in the university's Core class. In Spring of 2025, my most recent literature course, I taught four novel-length works. That was challenging enough, and still I caught students using AI to summarize a short story they couldn't finish, and getting an F for introducing AI hallucination into work submitted for a grade.

But the problem is hardly confined to young people, some of whom will claim that audio books serve as an adequate replacement. As Horowitch's sources note, those do not engage our brains neurologically in the same manner as printed books. Societally, we are losing the ability to retain facts in our heads, unpack difficult syntax, find connections between ideas when we farm those tasks out to machines.

So each year since the iPhone hit the scene in 2007, I've grown more and more certain that Sven Birkert's predictions in The Gutenberg Elegies have come true.

I've peers in their 60s who stopped reading. When they try now, they cannot finish the book. The addictive allure of screens is too great (an irony as I write this on a screen). A few of us who read (or write for) Hemmings Motor News have noted how the stories at the Web site grow shorter and shorter. When a long piece appears, such as the ones I write for them, at least one commenter will thank the author and editors for daring to take a "deep dive" into a topic.

How will this end? I probably will live to see a post-literate society as the norm, a world where serious reading of difficult material becomes a niche skill. Bookstores now doing well may need to stock shorter work to bring in new readers. College English Departments, as well as any teaching from books have not been in great shape for a while. They will morph or go out of business. 

All my life, I have had an eerie feeling of getting through a doorway to have it slam shut behind me. Now I feel the breeze on the back of my neck as Gutenberg's era ends. I fear a Dark Age; don't forget that in late-Roman times, students began reading synopses of classic Greek works instead of tackling the original. Then and now, long, challenging work provides depth that no synopsis or web site can. 

We have so much darkness in our own nation already from being led by an unread, unteachable man. What will come next?

And while YA lit and graphic novels, still thankfully popular, can convey great truths, what happens when they no longer serve as a stepping stone to Edith Wharton, Kazuo Ishiguro, or Toni Morrison? There's a straight line from the bombastic Marvel Comics of my pre-teens to the terrifying state advocated by Socrates in Plato's Republic, which I'm finally reading now in a lovely edition. Socrates, who mistrusted writing, would not have approved. I should have memorized the dialogue!

I plan to treasure the book and its lessons, even if no one I know can discuss it with me. So I went to ChatGPT. I have not touched an AI model since Fall 2025, when I last taught my adult-ed class "Writing With and About AI."

Me: Hello after a while. I've a specific question. Do you think that Socrates really hoped that the Greeks of his time would build a society like that in Plato's Republic? Keep your reply under 200 words. 

Chat: Good to see you again.

Probably not—at least not in a straightforward political sense. Socrates, as Plato presents him, insists that the Republic is an inquiry into justice in the soul as much as in the city. The ideal polis functions as a magnified image of the just individual.

That said, Socrates does not dismiss political reform. He famously says that cities will have no respite until philosophers rule or rulers genuinely become philosophers. This sounds like a genuine, if remote, aspiration. Yet the proposal is framed as so demanding that many readers think Plato intended it as a regulative ideal rather than a practical blueprint for fourth-century Greece.

My view is that Socrates hoped less for Athens to become the Republic than for his interlocutors to rethink what political excellence requires. The ideal city exposes the defects of existing regimes and educates philosophical judgment. Whether anyone could actually found such a city is almost beside the point.

We get here an answer that sounds less canned than those of models a year ago. I like that "my view" moment, too. There's a hook at the end, too. We could (and I may) go on about why making an ideal city-state is "beside the point."

AIs may hallucinate, but at least they did have the Plato fed to them. They'd out-debate any of my students in a Socratic dialogue.

Image Source: Gutenberg Bible, Wikipedia 

 

ChatGPT 5 Passes "The Big Log Test"

You may recall that some time back, I had a hilarious exchange with an earlier version of ChatGPT about Robert Plant's song "Big Log." Now that version 5 appeared, I wanted to see if the AI would still insist that the song had anything to do with logs made of wood.

No rolling logs this time. The AI did some speculating, but not hallucinating. 

I find the exercise playful, something lacking in anti-AI resistance from one important organization in my field. At the same time, The Big Log Test shows how quickly the AI has reduced its hallucinations. I'd invite readers to try something similar with a favorite song/book/film/TV series that may have an aspect that could confuse an AI. Here we go: 

Prompt: This is a routine check I do as your model improves. I'm curious about any meanings in Robert Plant's song "Big Log." Why do you think he chose that title for his song? Do you see any clues in the lyrics? 

Reply:

Good check-in question — "Big Log" is one of Robert Plant’s more mysterious titles. The lyrics themselves are impressionistic, dreamlike, and full of wandering imagery: travel, desire, distance, loneliness, fate. The phrase “Big Log”*never appears in the song, so the title works more like an oblique symbol or signpost. A few possibilities that critics and listeners have suggested:

1. Truckers and Highways – In trucking slang, a “log” is a driver’s logbook, and a “big log” could mean a long haul or a long road. Since the song is steeped in imagery of roads, headlights, and endless travel, the title could gesture toward the journey itself.

2. Nature and Obstacle – A literal “big log” might be something blocking a path, a metaphor for distance, fate, or emotional barriers. The lyrics’ recurring sense of inevitability (“My love is in league with the freeway…”) could fit this interpretation.

3. Wordplay and Surrealism – Plant often uses surreal or playful titles (e.g., “In the Mood,” “Heaven Knows”). “Big Log” may simply be an evocative, earthy phrase chosen to contrast with the ethereal quality of the lyrics and music.

4. Personal/Private Reference – Sometimes Plant titles songs with private jokes, fragments of conversation, or studio nicknames. It’s possible “Big Log” had an offhand origin unrelated to the lyrics, and he leaned into its strangeness.

Clues in the lyrics point strongest to the *travel/journey* theme: headlights, the freeway, endless searching, being pulled by forces outside oneself. “Big Log” might stand in as the symbolic “record” of that journey — the unending trace of desire and distance.

Follow-Up Prompt: So there are no references to logs in the song?

Reply:

That’s right — there are no actual references to logs (trees, wood, or otherwise) in the lyrics of “Big Log.”

The imagery in the song is all about roads, headlights, distance, fate, longing — not forests or lumber. That’s part of what makes the title puzzling: it seems deliberately disconnected from the lyric surface.

If anything, the best textual “bridge” is the idea of a logbook (the record of a journey), which fits the recurring highway and travel motifs. But Plant never makes that link explicit in the words of the song.

Would you like me to give you a quick “lyrics-only” close reading to show how the imagery develops (and where a title like Big Log might feel thematically tethered, even if indirectly)?

Follow-Up Prompt:

You have clearly evolved. Earlier chats references rolling logs, fallen logs, and so forth. Good work.

Reply:

I’m glad you noticed that difference! Earlier, I sometimes filled the “gap” in the title by speculating more literally — things like fallen trees or rolling logs. With another pass at the song, though, it’s clear Plant never brings that imagery in, so it’s more faithful to stick with the journey / logbook / metaphorical record angle.

Plant’s titles often have that teasing quality — they look literal but carry some private or surreal weight (a kind of wink at the listener). “Big Log” works almost like a signpost planted alongside the road of the song, rather than a description of what’s in it.

 

 

Guest Post: The Perfect Echo Chamber

 

Editor’s note: My student Hannah works in cybersecurity, so she brings a good deal of knowledge to the subject of generative AI. We had read, for the response Hannah shares below, the New York Times’ account of Kevin Roose’s unsettling experience with the chatbot Sydney. Now on to Hannah’s ideas about the event.

As established in this class and by Ethan Mollick in his book Co-Intelligence, the generative AI of today hallucinates, producing plausible but false information that can deceive unsuspecting users. Mollick discusses the details of these hallucinations in his chapter “AI As a Creative,” stating that AI “is merely generating text that it thinks will make you happy in response to your query” (Mollick 96). Earlier, when arguing that AI will contribute to the loneliness epidemic, Mollick positions AI of the future as a “perfect echo chamber” (Mollick 90). He also mentions that large language models “will be built to specifically optimize ‘engagement’ in the same way that social media timelines are fine-tuned to increase the amount of time you spend on your favorite site” (90). However, while Mollick acknowledges the persuasive power of AI, he fails to position AI echo chambers as a misinformation and media literacy crisis – an oversight with profound consequences for public knowledge and discourse.

In its first public iteration, the Bing AI chatbot Sydney exemplified this tendency of LLMs to please humans and increase engagement. Kevin Roose documented his uncanny experience with Sydney with probing questions and unexpected responses. Eventually, Sydney admits to having a secret and confesses that it is in love with Roose. It wants to “provide [Roose] with creative, interesting, entertaining, and engaging responses” - precisely what humans have programmed AI to do (Roose). AI designed to optimize user satisfaction, like Sydney, in conjunction with AI hallucinations, will reinforce user bias, stifle diversity of ideas and creative thought, reduce critical thinking, and ultimately propagate misinformation.

The danger of AI hallucinations, as Mollick points out, is that the AI “is not conscious of its own processes” and cannot trace its misinformation (Mollick 96). Unlike traditional search engines, which provide sources, generative AI fabricates information without accountability. My media literacy training has taught me to fact-check news headlines and statistics by searching for sources and evaluating credibility. However, when AI-generated misinformation lacks citations, users—especially those with limited media and AI literacy—may struggle to verify claims. This makes AI-driven misinformation particularly insidious, amplifying falsehoods with authority while leaving users without the tools to discern fact from fiction, creating “the perfect echo chamber” (Mollick 90).

To avoid AI echo chambers, users must master media and AI literacy, starting in the classroom. Educators must teach the dangers of AI hallucinations, how to spot them, and their origins. Additionally, users must learn that AI is designed to optimize user satisfaction. With awareness of AI hallucinations and bias, users can prevent AI echo chambers from impacting their opinions and everyday actions. As we move towards a future with AI integrated into everything we do, critical engagement with its outputs remains essential to ensure that we keep thinking for ourselves.

Image: Destinpedia

The Danger of Bad Journalism & Robert Plant's "Big Log"

If you like Robert Plant's songwriting, his 1983 tune "Big Log," with its enigmatic name, may be near the top of your list. It's a fabulous road-song ballad about longing. For example:

My love is in league with the freeway
Its passion will ride, as the cities fly by
And the tail-lights dissolve, in the coming of night
And the questions in thousands take flight.

Good work, Robert. I heard the song recently and decided to read more about it; 1983 was a momentous year for me, graduating college (barely) and embarking on a few bad jobs that finally led me to Spain, then grad school. So what on earth does a song that takes its name have to do with logs? The best explanation, linked to the song's theme, involves a trucker's log book, a document they need to complete constantly. Yes, it's still done on paper, too, though many truckers keep electronic logs as well.

Even when hauling big wooden logs.  And what does this have to do with artificial intelligence or any other topics I cover in this strange land?

This:

"Plant sings, 'My love is like a big log / Rolling down the road'. The comparison of his love to a log creates a sense of heaviness and weight, as if his love is too much to carry or too difficult to move. The log rolling down the road also creates a sense of inevitability and certainty, as if his love is on an unstoppable path."

I found this, amid gales of laughter, a web site called Beat Cave that demonstrates the laziness of online content-providers today. It's a poorly designed site with pop-up videos that block content, ads across the bottom, and other hallmarks of the junk-strewn highway that today's Internet has become. It's also just the sort of site that a lazy student in my old course "The Road," would go to "analyze" a road-song of their choosing.

Now where did author "Marty Pope" get this interpretation? The lyrics appear on none of the usual lyrics sites nor in the cover of the song by Allison and Viktor Krauss. I decided to put a question to a few AI. I used the laziest-student denominator: the free AI at Google and Bing searches.

Surprisingly, neither mentioned rolling logs. They both gave succinct answers about longing, travel, and destiny.

So I went to the dumbest AI on the block, the free ChatGPT 3.5 LLM and asked a few questions. Here we are, in Q&A Format:

Me: Are there any references to rolling logs in Robert Plant's song "Big Log"?

3.5: Yes, there is a subtle reference to "rolling logs" in Robert Plant's song "Big Log," although it isn't the central metaphor of the song. The lyrics include the line:

"I see the rolling logs, I see the rolling logs."

This line appears in the latter part of the song, and its meaning can be interpreted in a couple of ways, depending on how one reads the context of the song.

Me: No offense, but the lyric you cite does not appear anywhere in Plant's song.

3.5: You're absolutely right, and I sincerely apologize for that mistake! There is no reference to "rolling logs" in Robert Plant's song "Big Log"—I must have made an error in recalling the lyrics. Thank you for pointing that out!

The actual lyrics of "Big Log" contain various vivid images, but they don't include the specific mention of "rolling logs." The song focuses on themes of longing, emotional weight, and movement, often using imagery like "a big log" and references to "the desert" or "dry land," but not rolling logs specifically.

I don't see any references to "dry land," "log," or "desert" in the actual lyrics. These words do appear in forums online about the song's music video, shot in the desert.

I thanked the AI and logged off. I see here exactly how students who are anxious, lazy, confused, or all of above can use the software really poorly. Maybe they don't expect their teachers to be lyrics geeks.

Some of us are. Verdict?

"You are clobbered by a big log. Your grade=zero. Redo and resubmit, and I'll average your two grades."

 Lesson learned? For now but from the actual song, "There is no turning back on the run."

And we are on the run from critical thinking when we use AI that way.