Lament for the MIT Libraries Highlight

When texts are accessed solely by digitized means, without experiential basis in the original volumes, organization and material contexts, the learner is cut off from the process, extent and relationships that ground and constitute human works and knowledge. Those original works on paper, now being stored in dark spaces away from learner – or even staff-access, are the irreplaceable core and heart of human knowledge, history and expression. As the digital scan forms of many of those works [but probably excluding those whose copyrights are still enforceable] enter the repositories of AI, the works, ideas and facts become plagiarized and misrepresented. [When I was educated, plagiarism was the most serious academic offense; now it is epidemic via AI.] As AI-generated plagiarized text and images expand across the internet’s digital world, the actual voice of human-generated content diminishes.