I love the Gen Z saying ”touch grass.” It’s an undeniable rejection of the ways in which time spent online, in virtual spaces, indoors, isolated, doom-scrolling, and trolling is making us lose touch with reality, with a grounded sense of our humanity, and with nature. They’ll throw it out to someone who is “crashing out” (i.e., having an emotionally intense response to some triggering event), someone who needs to take a step back, refresh their perspective, and get back to “vibing” with the world. This phrase spotlights a fundamental connection across generations. No matter what judgments we may hold about how each age group is interacting with technology, there is a clear understanding that this tech boom, with all this data, has us hurtling down the information highway to somewhere we don’t really want or need to go. I highly recommend the idea of “touching grass” as a way to center ourselves in those things we can connect with tangibly as true in these dark and dangerous times in which we confront the destabilization and destruction of popular trust in Truth.
I remember the first time I used ChatGPT a few years ago. I was at a friend’s house, and her husband and I (who are both university educators) wanted to test if the system could write a paper we would pass in a class. We were blown away at what it produced. And, while now, with practice, it is much easier to tell the signs of something generated by AI, in that initial moment, it made us question so much about the production of knowledge; it seemed scary and yet promising. It felt exciting and bold. However, after the initial giddiness wore off, so too did the glitter of its seeming gold. As more and more information came out about the outsized energy consumption required for AI to produce answers to our questions (indeed feeding it one complex question is said to use up to roughly one bottle of water); as large data centers started rolling into communities around the country to upset the peace, the environment, and the people; as tech billionaires once again reminded us that any benefits of such technology and its economic gains were not going to trickle down to everyday people, it’s apparent that we cannot wander unequipped, unprepared, and unprotected into an artificially and unintelligently manufactured future.
To be clear, while it may be fun and easy to have answers ever ready at your fingertips to pluck from the nebulous “cloud”, to ask silly questions of a seemingly ethereal and omniscient digital “being” and see how it responds, to trade human interaction for what feels like an unbiased and factual exchange of ideas, to skip doing the work because AI can do it for you, in the end this transaction and its trade-offs are not worth the momentary escape from being an active and present participant in the world. Already, our cities are littered with surveillance tech watching our every move; our lives and our most intimate moments through texts, photos, social media posts, are being recorded, analyzed and sold to the highest bidder to manipulate our opinions, control our behaviors, and limit our freedoms; our artists, poets, authors, musicians are seeing their livelihoods snatched away as digitally created rip-offs are mass produced; ur workers are steadily losing jobs to automation; our natural resources upon which we and billions of other species on this planet depend are yet again being plundered. Indeed, while the old line has been that technology will set us free, we are seeing yet again that the Luddites had it right.
And so, what are we to do? How do we make sense of the perceived (and sometimes quite real) benefits that come from the presence of technology in our lives? How do we embrace new inventions while also working to mitigate the damage they cause to our earth, our bodies, the other species, and natural resources under our care? Is there a good way to advance AI and tech? These are the kinds of questions that we’ve been grappling with at Riverwise. And, what has been so interesting as we hold community conversations, is that so far, even when people bring up what they might miss (fast GPS directions, for example), no one has said they’d be sorry if it all just ceased to exist tomorrow. Indeed, at our last political education, outside of recognizing the power of a few medical usages that provide greater accessibility and highly specified interventions for certain disabilities (usages we all agreed are extremely important), no one could think of a reason outside of truly helping people live their lives equitably that they just had to have all this technology to survive.
This edition of Riverwise is dedicated to these questions and to thinking about the potentials and pitfalls of what it means to be a part of the digital age. From poetry that asks us to ponder the “life” of machines, to stories that challenge the narratives of usefulness, ease and “progress” that often accompany mainstream dialogues about AI and tech usage, to tales of dedicated organizers and citizens who are coming together to push back against the rising tide of techno-fascism, people across Detroit, Michigan and that nation are thinking hard, speaking out, acting bravely. They are seeing the grassy forest through the pixelated trees.
As we settle into the coming winter and ready ourselves for the cold and more time indoors, I encourage us to think of ways we can “touch grass” (or perhaps snow?) over the next few months. This could be holding a community gathering, starting a reading or writing circle, participating in a mutual aid network to help our neighbors and friends impacted by harsh new policies aimed at deepening the criminalization of poverty and difference, or joining us for a workshop. Just as we must imagine a future in which we don’t see ourselves as outside of and apart from nature, we can embrace the idea of “touching grass” as one that reminds us that our communities, our relationships with one another, and our care for our earth are what truly keep us rooted to our humanity and liberation. And as our dear friend Jesse Deerinwater reminds us in his article on resisting the dangerous move towards increasing nuclear reactors to fuel the bleak machinations of “tech bro” billionaires, data centers may have energy, but We The People have power. Peace. Catch me outside.
