on vibecoding
D'Arcy Norman,
2026/09/04
D'Arcy Norman collects his thoughts and experiences on using AI to quickly generate software prototypes and useful tools, a.k.a. vibecoding. "My career has somehow always been as a kind of translator between Nerds and Not-Nerds," he writes, "able to articulate things well enough that things make enough sense to everyone. Turns out, that’s kind of the vibecoding superpower." Vibecoding is an incredibly useful tool, he writes, but most definitely will not replace professional programmers.
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Digital Sovereignty In South African Higher Education
Laura Czerniewicz, Andrew Crouch, Delicia Davids, Jennifer Feldman, Kende Kefale, Paul Prinsloo, Janet Small,
South African Research Chair in Teaching and Learning,
2026/09/04
This paper (36 page PDF), which can be found via the University of Johannesburg portal, offers a useful discussion of digital sovereignty generally, with a particular focus on South Africa. The core of the paper is a framework describing degrees of sovereignty at the national, institutional, and individual level, each describing business models along with ontological, epistemological and sovereignty implications. This part of the paper is pretty clear; the section focused on South Africa is more of a slog, though there is a useful discussion of Nancy Fraser's model of justice: "Fraser's starting point is that 'the most general meaning of justice is parity of participation', by which she means that justice requires social arrangements that allow all to participate as peers in social life. She then identifies three mutually entangled dimensions through which participatory parity can be blocked: distribution, recognition, and representation." With respect to representation, "affirmative responses seek voice within existing governance," while "transformative responses aim to change the underlying grammar." What this means for South Africa is that an analysis requires more than just an examination of decisions made at the political level, but also of the forces informing them, and often constraining them.
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AI for Academic Libraries: Open-Weight AI Models for Local and Private Use
Kari D. Weaver,
Choice 360,
2026/09/07
This is a good article arguing that "open-weight AI models offer librarians the advantages of AI but addresses many of the profession's ethical concerns around privacy." The models can be run locally, so user data is never sent into the cloud and use of the models doesn't require data centres. The article outlines the models and applications (a.k.a. 'model engines') academic librarians can use. "Model engines such as LM Studio and Ollama have lowered the barriers to experimentation and deployment, making it possible for individuals and institutions to run increasingly capable models on local hardware. At the same time, models such as Ministral-3 14B, Qwen3 14B, and Olmo-3 demonstrate that open-weight alternatives can support many of the practical tasks academic libraries encounter."
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The Rise of AI Companions
Lee Rainie,
Digital Future Center,
2026/09/03
What's more interesting than the percentages outline throughout this survey (26 page PDF) are the descriptions of what it feels like to people who actually have AI companions. For example, "Once people begin using AI for personal purposes, many develop something that looks and feels like a relationship encompassing trust, emotional connection and a sense of being understood." And "Users feel AI understands them, sometimes better than other people do. They report they feel validated and they say they get good advice from their bot companion in social situations." Now I can easily imagine people responding "no, no, you shouldn't" but I'm on the side of people who need these things and haven't found it through traditional means for one reason or another.
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The Disappearing Bottom Rung in L&D
Philippa Hardman,
Dr Phil's Newsletter,
2026/09/03
This is an interesting take. Philippa Hardman explains the 'disappearance' of entry-level roles in learning and development as a consequence of the way AI is replacing human work at those lower levels. Nothing new there. But then comes the observation, "L&D work is going from a craft you learned by doing - producing courses, mastering tools, making things - to a discipline you're trusted to exercise: diagnosing problems, specifying solutions, judging quality and measuring impact." I wonder whether this is true - the professions I can think of, such as engineering, medicine and law, all depend a lot on developing through experience the sort of intuition and socialization needed to be 'professional'. Learning, in other words, by doing.
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Seeing Learning Differently: What Generative AI Reveals About Human Capability Development
Tope Onitiri,
EDUCAUSE Review,
2026/09/03
This article draws from a UNESCO report to assert that "in a world where GenAI is becoming part of learning, work, and professional practice, the enduring contribution of colleges and universities is designing learning environments that support the development of those capabilities while creating opportunities for that development to become visible and recognized." Which is fair enough. But the intent is to offer the always reassuring statement that "These questions do not require us to abandon familiar educational practices. In many cases, they simply invite us to build on what already exists." The questions in question invite the learner to reflect on their own learning - to ask, for example, "what evidence or counter-argument changed your thinking?" or "Which suggestion did you reject and why?". And they invite instructors to ask things like "What distinctly human capabilities are important for learners to develop?" None of this embraces the possibility that learners ill need to learn different things than they did before AI, and that as a result what we teach, how we teach, and why we tech may be fundamentally altered.
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Biocomputation: Moving Beyond Turing with Living Cellular Computers
Ángel Goñi-Moreno,
2026/09/03
This article describes work developing biology-based computation, or 'biocomputation'. "Using synthetic biology, it is now possible to modify the specific nature of each of these steps in biological systems (for example, edit the DNA of living cells to sense new inputs) allowing for the programming of information processing devices with living matter."
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12 Literary Opinions That Would Get Me Kicked Out of an MFA Program
Liza Libes,
Pens and Poison,
2026/09/03
I don't make any claim to have written literature, but if I think of OLDaily as a single work (and, in many ways, I do) then I have followed most if not all of these opinions. I don't mind writing in long sentences, I focus on telling as much as showing, and digressions are the order of the day. And if I ever come up with what I think is a beautiful sentence, there's no way I'm leaving it out of the final edit.
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Tennessee’s free community college program ‘pays for itself,’ working paper finds
Jamaal Abdul-Alim,
Higher Ed Dive,
2026/09/03
I'm sure some economists will still argue that free tuition doesn't help people, but according to this article, "the Tennessee Promise program - the first of its kind in the country - successfully boosted college enrollment and attainment, analysis showed." What's more, "one of the study's co-authors said the program pays for itself when factoring in the higher salaries that degree holders earn on average compared to their peers who hold just a high school diploma." Given how important education is supposed to be for the economy and for democracy, etc., etc., it has always been a mystery to me why people argue that the people least capable of paying for it - the students themselves - should foot the bill.
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How your brain and body work together to shape experience
Debra Herrick,
Futurity,
2026/09/01
I honestly think the view expressed here represents a confusion about how the brain and body interact. Here's the argument offered by Asa Young: "The brain is not simply receiving messages from the body... The heartbeat, breath, and gastric rhythm are regular, predictable signals around which groups of neurons can organize, determining when they become more or less receptive to information." I don't deny any of that. But consider this analogy: "The findings also complicate the familiar image of a brain in a vat," says Young. "This science-fiction brain, kept alive but severed from its body, might still generate neural activity. Yet it would be cut off from the recurring bodily signals that help give experience its visceral character and anchor it to a living self." But the 'brain in a vat' thought experiment postulates a brain complete with input signals exactly like those from the various senses, including bodily sensations, as well as physical parameters, such as blood flow. There isn't some magic non-physical mechanisms through which the body interacts with the brain. And if it's physical, it can be emulated.
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Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity
Lisa Siraganian,
Academe Magazine,
2026/09/02
My own view on 'viewpoint diversity' is that, while I hold that diversity is a good thing, I don't believe that the proponents of viewpoint diversity actually want diversity; they rather want more support for one particular type of viewpoint. Otherwise, we'd see them advocating for more Marxists in business schools and for progressives to be appointed to corporate boards. My opinion here aligns with thesis number seven in this set of arguments offered by Lisa Siraganian.
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Consent and the Formation of Preferences
Richard Pettigrew,
Blog of the APA,
2026/09/02
Arguably, consent is based at least in part on our preferences. But in some cases those preferences are not really our own. We're not talking about coercion here, but cases whether the preference really appears to be genuine, and yet is created through some indirect mechanism, such as the manipulation of information, or forcing you to pay attention to something. This article discusses the sorts of preference-creation mechanisms that can inform legitimate consent and those which don't. The author finds the difference in "the room these mechanisms leave you for the free exercise of agency." But it's a fine line, and in many ways fuzzy. Image: kleidkunst.de
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Counteracting host reactions to synthetic reprogramming in animal forms of artificial life
Ithai Rabinowitch, Leonardo Bich, Andrea Roli, Elio Tuci,
PhilSci Archive,
2026/09/02
You might want to read this (7 page PDF) twice: "Recent advances in synthetic biology enable the reconfiguration of neural circuits within live animals, making it possible to reprogram their behaviours, and create animal forms of artificial life. While fulfilling human design goals, such systems actively preserve their autonomy, self-maintenance and self-regulation, which could create a conflict disrupting the functioning and persistence of either host organism or the synthetic module incorporated in the host." In other words, if we rewire a living beetle, what happens if the beetle reasserts its own autonomous behaviour? Note that we're not asking whether we should rewire living neural networks - we're already doing that - but rather, what happens when we do. When you think about it, societies and educators face the same sort of problem with their students - what happens when the student's we've taught begin to assert their own independence (possibly subverting the system that educated them in the first place)?
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How to Build Your Own Data Dashboard: No Coding Required
Vicki Davis,
Cool Cat Teacher Blog,
2026/09/02
I may as well offer this glimpse into a whole community of practitioners, promoters and technologies directed toward the U.S. school system. From my perspective it's sort of funny to see that this is where some of the original edubloggers like Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher) and John Spencer ended up. There's a lot of product placement and commercialism wrapped up in all of this, from the podcast sponsor (Experience AI, a free program co-founded by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind) to the podcast guest A.J. Juliani's ajjuliani.com 'AI-Ready School Leaders cohorts'. None of this is to say there's no value here - the discussion of 'how to build a data dashboard without writing code' is something teachers can actually use. And there are arguments about how AI can be used in the classroom to help students learn: "Last year, when I taught my students spreadsheets, I also taught them to use AI to help them build pivot tables and interpret data, and I was shocked at how quickly they learned and advanced more deeply into data analytics than I could ever get them before." Anyhow, like I say, there's a whole world here, worth watching and, once in a while, linking to.
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Education’s Conference Problem
Mark Baxter,
Eduwonk,
2026/09/01
My main objection to this article is that it uses the word 'convening' as a noun, which hurts my ears. Beyond that, the criticism of conferences is reasonably sound. "The power dynamic with funders often leads to programming that focuses on showcase rather than struggle and performative agreements rather than engaging to understand the hard nuances of our work." Also, "the format, as it usually is now, pretends it is about content and problem-solving (w)hen, in fact, it is built around hallway conversations and drinks at the bar." I don't think turning conferences into some sort of school addresses the issue. Let's recognize them for what they are, 'continued socialization into a discipline'. This is a pretty complex function, and is a lot more than just 'learning stuff', 'solving problems' or 'achieving outcomes'.
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Is open, distance, and digital education (ODDE) good for the environment? A systematic review of carbon footprint studies
Olaf Zawacki-Richter, Berrin Cafa,
Online Learning,
2026/09/01
You'd think at first glance that Open, Distance, and Digital Education (ODDE) is good for the environment. After all, it means we don't have to build learning institutions and travel to them, not to mention the savings in pulp and paper production. That's not really what this review (26 page PDF) finds, though. "ODDE relies heavily on digital devices and infrastructure. Each year, billions of electronic devices are manufactured. The production of these devices and their batteries relies on dozens of nonrenewable resources, including scarce metals and rare earth elements... studies also provided insights into certain rebound effects, where energy savings in one area are offset by increased use in another." The main result, though, is that nobody has enough data to actually say one way or another.
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“Enshittification” Isn’t Real
Ruby Justice Thelot,
a16z,
2026/09/01
This is the first real pushback to Cory Doctorow's "enshittification" narrative I've seen. The argument, in a nutshell, is that platforms change because they're meeting the needs of a wider, more global, demographic, and the data says that user satisfaction has actually increased. Both arguments can be criticized. There are many reasons for change in platforms; user demographics is just one. The problems happen when change is motivated by increased monetization; this is what motivates increased focus on things like advertising and surveillance. And also, are people more satisfied? Author Ruby Thelot draws from American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) data to argue that they are. There's no link, but that's probably because if you actually look ACSI up and read what they say, you read things like "correlation between corporate profit and customer satisfaction is turning increasingly negative" and "customer complaints are at record levels" with "now looming pent-up customer defection".
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Higher Ed Needs to Prove Students Are Learning
Doug Lederman,
Inside Higher Ed,
2026/09/01
In this open access article, Doug Lederman argues that "that colleges and universities collectively are unable—or have declined—to measure and prove whether and how much their students learn." This is presented as a Big Problem. "It's hard to persuade people that your primary 'product' is worth paying for when you can't prove they're actually getting it." This argument, though, presumes that 'learning' is the primary 'product' and that it can be measured. I don't think either is true. The objective of higher education, from my perspective, might better be characterized as 'socialization into a discipline'. Sure, maybe there are facts and theorems to be learned. But it's mostly about making connections, internalizing the values, and gaining practical experience. That's what makes online learning such a challenge, and why it's so hard to measure the value.
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Wander
Susam Pal,
Codeberg.org,
2026/09/01
This is a really cool decentralized version of the web. "Each Wander console loads personal websites and pages recommended by the Wander community. Further, each Wander console can link to other Wander consoles, forming a lightweight, decentralised network for browsing the small web of personal websites.... The most interesting aspect of the Wander console is that everything happens on the client-side, on the user's web browser. As a website owner, you do not need to set up any server-side components. The only thing you need to do is place the above two files somewhere on your web server." Via Alan Levine.
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Firefox 155 Adds Two New Changes for Faster Web Browsing
Sourav Rudra,
It's FOSS,
2026/09/01
You might not believe it, but I browse the web without seeing advertisements, because I use Firefox. "This is the best time to switch to Firefox. uBlock Origin's full version has been broken on Chrome since Google disabled Manifest V2 back in July 2025, and yesterday Google kicked it out from the Chrome Web Store entirely." Via Doug Belshaw, who suggests Zen Browser as well.
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Writing with AI
O'Reilly,
O'Reilly,
2026/08/31
Tim O'Reilly argues that "AI is a medium, like painting, sculpture, photography, music, or language itself. If AI is a medium, it is a field of possibility from which humans can and will summon up and communicate insights, truth, beauty." This may be true, but we need to understand that what we create using AI is different from what it putatively replaces, just as what we create using photography is different from what we create using paint and brush. So (in my view) AI-based writing is producing something different from what is created when we write without using AI. How to express this difference? Well, here's a hint. O'Reilly describes how AI helped him write this post, saying "There are perhaps 40 or 50 words supplied by Claude, including the quotes from Delaroche and Baudelaire... I had read Baudelaire but I'd never heard of Delaroche." Now, when I reference someone, it's typically because I had previously read what I'm referencing, and I found the association myself. But here we have Delaroche being plucked out of the air by O'Reilly, not based on any previous experience, but because of Claude. Did O'Reilly go back and read and become familiar with Delaroche? No - he "verified both quotes by checking the original sources and reading a bit more about the ferment of the time". So what did O'Reilly mean when he inserted the quote? We don't know.
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Come Up to the Lab and See What's on the Slab
Audrey Watters,
Second Breakfast,
2026/08/31
Audrey Watters makes a point I think is correct: "I think that 'which technology' is the wrong question... because this focus on gadgets and apps and algorithms... always insures that the problems and solutions in education are framed almost exclusively in terms of the technology itself." So what should we focus on? "The goal, broadly speaking, is to learn how to be human, how to be part of humanity. The goal is to create the conditions -- in a lesson, in a classroom, in a school, in a system -- where students and teachers alike can practice what matters." I might quibble, but let's accept that. Can we say this, then? "What matters is not 'using technology'." But that takes us back to the 'wrong question'. We don't want to define 'what matters' in terms of whether or not we use technology - and indeed, 'what matters' is often going to involve technology. Not edtech, necessarily - but I needed a car to learn to drive, a camera to learn photography, a scanning electron microscope to learn biochemistry... and artificial intelligence to learn programming. These are all ways I am 'part of humanity'. Because humanity uses technology. Via Dagmar Monett.
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Copyright 2026 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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