An LLM strikes me as an absolute evil, within my own field; even seeing little snippets of it feels like being covered in green slime. But the smartphone is the thing that was supposed to be a little good, a little bad, something that could plausibly stand as a necessary evil. I’m now convinced that that’s wrong, and I think it will help the larger problem to consider the smaller one first, since that’s the one each of us as individuals can do something about, now, today. In one recent description of what it was like to travel with a group to Peru without smartphones, as a pact, one woman spoke enthusiastically of “presence, pure presence.” If you have had a smartphone for several years, the chances are that moments like this are from ever-more-distant memory, not recent unlettered experience, no matter how well you can still philosophically explain them.

Like many educators, I dread another school year with AI. But a greater threat lurks close at hand.