Stephen Downes

This is a review of Alan F. Blackwell's open access book Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI (239 page PDF). I haven't read the book yet but it seems right up my alley. Christopher Newfield summarizes, "we must organize widespread social means to learn everyday programming that is rooted in 'MORAL CODES.' The first word is an acronym for More Open Representation for Accessible Learning... More Open Representations allow information to be exchanged, Access to Learning allows it to be acquired, and Control Over Digital Expression [the second word] allows it to be expressed." Now there is a good point here, and that is that the ethos of computer programming when it was in its infancy was agency. We weren't passive subjects of a machine, we could control it. Now that remains true (to an extent) in the age of AI. But. "It's hard to imagine the spread of programming skills in a country like the United States, where fewer than half of adults read even one book a year. But by now it's pretty much do or die. So better do it."