Jeff DeGraff
Once upon a time — not so long ago — the internet opened like a library with no closing hours. It offered us Google, and then Wikipedia, and with them a curious kind of magic: everything we ever wanted to know, right there, blinking in front of us. It was harmless enough, even liberating. We no longer had to argue about who directed Casablanca or the difference between a quark and a lepton. Answers flowed like tap water.
But something happened in that flood. We began mistaking the map for the terrain.
Not long after came the shortcuts — CliffsNotes for Shakespeare, then for Kant, then for life itself. Everything abstract or difficult was carved into quick summaries, punchy headlines, 30-second reels. Learning became a buffet of “life hacks,” each one promising to make you smarter, faster, richer, or more “optimized.” We began slicing reality into slivers, assuming that each fragment bore the same shimmering reflection as the whole. It was as if a single puzzle piece, held aloft and scrutinized, could reveal the full picture.
But ask anyone who actually knows something — really knows it. A scientist who’s spent decades in a lab, an artist whose hands are stained with pigment, a leader who’s failed forward more times than they can count. They’ll tell you: a fact out of context is just a shard of glass. It cuts. It glints. But it doesn’t build a window. That’s why we ask contestants in a spelling bee to “use the word in a sentence.” It’s not about rote recall. It’s about anchoring meaning in context — about knowing when, why, and how a thing matters.
Then came AI.
At first, it was dazzling. It finished your sentence, cleaned your prose, did your homework. The answers got longer, smoother, more convincing. It stopped being a search engine and became an oracle. A velvet voice in your ear. An expert on demand.
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