Stephen Downes

This is a longish discussion of McLuhan's idea of a tool as an extension of the self, which then of course can be applied to media. Today, it can be applied to AI. So when we say 'AI is a tool' we're not limiting our imagination - "the ceiling of what tool literacy can imagine" - we are instead inviting ourselves to explore how a human and an AI can be (dare I say it?) a system. Now I'm not sure Levine meant his discussion exactly that way, but this is what follows from the text. And I question both McLuhan and that reading. I used to consider the question of whether a social network is an extension of the neural network (which is essentially the Siemens interpretation of connectivism). But I see them as two separate networks, with a process of communication (essentially, emergence and recognition) between them. The McLuhan argument is a nice metaphor. But it should not be taken literally.