imperfect offerings podcast

In this episode, I talk to Doug Belshaw, co-founder of We Are Open cooperative, an old friend and sometime sparring partner – I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that. And if you’re here for the AI, we dig into large language models, the need for playful as well as critical spaces, and current AI literacy projects, all in the second half. In the first half we revisit some older ground, discussing the various digital literacy frameworks we’ve been involved with and whether they are still relevant. By way of Walter Ong on literacy and William Empson on ambiguity we come around to whether AI literacy is a useful term. No, we don’t have any simple solutions and yes, we do disagree about several things, hopefully in an interesting way. As always there are lots of references in the show notes below.
Please do like, comment, subscribe, and consider becoming a paid subscriber so I can keep working with my good friend and audio wizard Ans to improve the sound of the pod. Their contact details are also in the shownotes, along with Bryan’s who drew the ‘contexts’ image and others you’ll find on the blog.
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Digital literacy stuff we mention:
Doug’s ‘open thinkering’ blog: https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/
Doug’s book about his digital literacy framework: https://dougbelshaw.com/essential-elements-book.pdf
Jisc Digital Capabilities framework: https://digitalcapability.jisc.ac.uk/what-is-digital-capability/individual-digital-capabilities/our-digital-capabilities-framework/
Knobel and Lankshear: the ‘new’ literacies https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-2/knobel-and-lankshear-on-the-new-literacies
Kahn and Kellner: Reconstructing Techno-literacies: https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/technoliteracy.pdf
DigCompEdu (Digital Competence Framework for Educators): https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/digcompedu_en
PISA 2029 Media and AI Literacy assessment: https://www.oecd.org/en/about/projects/pisa-2029-media-and-artificial-intelligence-literacy.html
Angela Gunder and team: AI literacies: https://aiopeneducation.pubpub.org/pub/fmktz5d3/release/4
Other stuff we mention:
Danah Boyd context collapse: https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/12/08/coining-context-collapse.html
William Empson 7 types of ambiguity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Types_of_Ambiguity
Richard Rorty on dead metaphors: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n07/richard-rorty/the-contingency-of-language
Walter Ong Orality and Literacy: https://monoskop.org/images/d/db/Ong_Walter_J_Orality_and_Literacy_2nd_ed.pdf
Walter Ong on secondary orality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_orality
Richard Seymour Twittering machine: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2505-the-twittering-machine
The people who help me could help you too:
Ans for Audio: https://anshassel.net/
Bryan at Visual Thinkery for visual thinkery: visualthinkery.com


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Some time ago I invited Katie (Kathryn) Conrad onto a discussion panel in the Generative Dialogues series, and while this covered some essential ground in AI pedagogies, I felt there was a lot more of her work to dig into. So I was delighted she agreed to come onto Imperfect Offerings for a deeper dive, particularly into her Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in Education.
Katie is a Professor of English at Kansas University and co-director of the AI & Digital Literacy project, in partnership with the National Humanities Center, as well as Associate Editor of the journal Critical AI. Her Blueprint was one of the first things coming out of the AI tailspin that really spoke to me - and I increasingly think a human rights based approach is critical - not only in the negative sense that the inequities of AI threaten so many legally enshrined rights (equality, non-discrimination, freedom of thought and expression for example) but also in a positive sense.
We need something in which to ground our ideas about humanity, in opposition to definitions of ‘the human’ emerging from the AI industry as a kind of host species for ‘intelligence’, and then as an inverse or supplement or deficiency in relation to whatever ‘artificial’ intelligence is supposed to be capable of. Human rights is a way of thinking about being human means that - for all its imperfections - starts from our common vulnerability and dependence on each other, and therefore our equality. Human rights have a long history of collective thought and action, and shared institutions that seemed robust until quite recently.
So it was the connection between education and rights, and Katie’s intentions in developing the blueprint, that I really wanted to talk about. As ever, we ranged well beyond our original brief. Here are links to some of the resources we touched on.
Links
The Blueprint https://criticalai.org/2023/07/17/a-blueprint-for-an-ai-bill-of-rights-for-education-kathryn-conrad/
NORRAG Policy Insights: AI and Digital Inequities (including a chapter by Katie and Lauren Goodlad) https://resources.norrag.org/storage/documents/NllPZ3GRhnWCbiMFcG0tUv5qxOt4snLAVxpOwgsN.pdf
Katie’s Critical Digital Literacy resources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TAXqYGid8sQz8v1ngTLD1qZBx2rNKHeKn9mcfWbFzRQ/
Katie’s blog: https://kconrad.substack.com/
Artificial Intelligence in Education: a critical view through the lens of human rights, democracy and the rule of law: https://rm.coe.int/artificial-intelligence-and-education-a-critical-view-through-the-lens/1680a886bd
Pedagogies of Generative AI: podcast with Helen and Mark Carrigan from May last year, with Katie and others:
Critical AI journal: https://www.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai
Marc Watkins’ Rhetorica: marcwatkins.substack.com
Thresholds in Education https://academyforeducationalstudies.org/journals/thresholds/
Maha Bali’s blog on critical AI literacies: https://blog.mahabali.me/educational-technology-2/what-i-mean-when-i-say-critical-ai-literacy/
Report to the UN General Assembly on AI in Education: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a79520-artificial-intelligence-education-report-special-rapporteur-right
Harvard’s AI Pedagogy Project: creative and critical engagement with AI in education: https://aipedagogy.org/
The Data Sovereignty CARE principles: https://www.gida-global.org/care
Melanie Dusseau’s Burn It Down piece for Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/11/12/burn-it-down-license-ai-resistance-opinion
Roderic N Crooks: ‘Access is capture’ - on how edtech reproduces racial inequality: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/access-is-capture/paper


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Audrey Watters returns to the pod for a chat about ‘AI realism’, and how we are all trudging up the long, weary slope of the AI adoption curve whether we believe in the promises or not. What will we find when we reach the ‘plateau of productivity’? Less work and more smarts so we can spend our infinite leisure time in cultural pursuits? Or a slightly more datafied version of the workplace we started from? Is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of AI hype? Are young people vibing with it? And what is ‘vibe coding’?
Get all the answers - well, some of the answers and a lot more questions - in this week’s podcast. And look out for more themed conversations with Audrey, including an episode on AI’s bad boys and why we love to hate ’em. Coming soon, if DOGE doesn’t get to us first.
Links
Mark Fisher’s concept of Capitalist Realism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism
Rob Horning’s piece on ‘vibe coding’:

Referenced from Audrey’s Second Breakfast newsletter: https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ai-against-democracy/
The ‘water we’re swimming in’ as an analogy for ideology is attributed to a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/20/fiction



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Remi Kalir is Associate Director of Faculty Development and Applied Research at Duke University and Associate Director of the University’s CARADITE Centre, where many wise ideas about student writing and reading are developed. Since ChatGPT first emerged, he has been working alongside students to understand the role Generative AI has and could have in their practice. He is also the author of two books on annotation as a way of linking student reading and writing, and empowering students in relation to academic texts. He finds annotation to be a ‘participatory act [that] marks public memory, struggles for justice, and social change’.
Remi and I discuss the need for ‘brave spaces’ where the purposes of education and writing can be talked about. In Remi’s words, trusting young people to work with us means being open about our own states of ‘not knowing’, before we can find collective ways ahead.
Links
Remi’s blog Remi(x)Learning https://remikalir.com/
Centre for Applied Research and Design in Transformative Education https://lile.duke.edu/caradite/: https://lile.duke.edu/caradite/
CARADITE centre’s resources for students on learning with AI: https://ai.duke.edu/ai-resources/learn-with-ai/
ReMarks on Power (2025) from MIT Press by Remi Kalir: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262551038/remarks-on-power/
Blog connected to the book: https://www.readingremarks.com/
Annotation (2021) from MIT Press by Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262539920/annotation/
The hypothes.is project and software: https://web.hypothes.is/



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In the first of several interviews about the impact of generative AI on planetary resources, I talk to Alistair Alexander, an academic and climate activist based in Berlin. He has all the facts about about the power and water costs of the data centres being rolled out ‘for AI’. But he also asks us to think more widely about the costs of computation, and of embedding the logics of scale into every aspect of economic and social life. I found this a fascinating conversation that should make every organisation with an IT budget ask itself some hard questions. Like: is the use of generative models compatible with commitments on sustainability and climate justice? And: whoever asked for this anyway?
Links:
Alistair’s newsletter/blog Reclaimed Systems:
His Web site: https://reclaimed.systems
Alistair’s recent piece in the Berliner Gazette, ‘After Progress’: https://berlinergazette.de/generative-ai-is-degenerating-human-ecologies-of-knowledge/
The course Alistair mentioned: https://www.schoolofma.org/programs/p/early2025-ecologies-of-technology
The glass room website: https://theglassroom.org/
‘Materialising the virtual’, art project mentioned by Helen: https://we-make-money-not-art.com/how-artists-and-designers-are-materialising-the-internet/
Some more recent creative works designed to ‘make visible’ the invisible labour of AI: https://berlinergazette.de/projects/silent-works/
A recent post by Edward Ongweso Jr detailing the capital investments being made by the ‘big four’ in building out data centres (notice that the boss of Nvidia sees inference, not training, as the major driver of demand):
You might also like my recent post about the UK Government’s plans to turn the UK into a data park
And this earlier post about the climate costs of AI: Saving the Planet, one cute animal video at a time
Finally, you might want to listen (again?) to Dan MacQuillan on the podcast, talking among other things about the need to ‘decompute’.


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