The anxious generation

Newsletter 19: April 3, 2025

1.

I’ve just this minute come back from a walk with Clancy, our dog. I often listen to a podcast on these walks or to a performance of a lengthy classical piece.

It’s uncanny, by the way, how often Clancy and I arrive back at home just as the podcast or symphony is finishing. Perhaps I adjust my pace or route, though I don’t do this consciously.

Anyway, today I listened to the latest Ezra Klein podcast. Klein is a New York Times writer. He was in conversation with Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation. I wrote about the book in an earlier post, ‘Then and Now’. I think it’s a profoundly important book.

Then and now

2.

A part of the conversation this morning was about AI. About what’s wonderful about it (I find it wonderful). But also about its potential to do significant harm to vulnerable children who are addicted to screens, their brains physiologically changed, their experience of the world irreversibly stunted.

Ezra Klein talked about his own lonely childhood, and how he could well have been drawn into a profoundly damaging relationship with AI bots had they existed when he was a child. He mentioned the case of a woman who fell in love with a bot, and the effect this had on her marriage. I’ve listened to that podcast. It’s a worry. It’s easy to imagine a lonely child being even more vulnerable.

3.

For the past three years, I’ve been working (on and off) on the draft of a novel. It’s called Sally and the Universarium. The Universarium is the modern (or slightly futuristic) version of the London Planetarium that I visited as a child. School groups explore the known worlds in the Universarium, using sophisticated AI.

The novel (it’s possible I might finish it one day) is about a lot more than AI. But in writing it, I’m wanting to understand more about the place of artificial intelligence as a learning tool. I want to develop a clearer perspective.

4.

Developing a clearer perspective.

I can try to do this alone; it’s usually better done with other people.

I’ve belonged to a number of book groups in my life. I taught at a school where some of the teachers had a monthly dinner together to discuss a chosen book. Then, a few years ago, Melbourne University had a wonderful program called The Great Books, and every month I’d drive from Canberra to Melbourne for an evening with 50 others to listen to a lecture and discussion of a particular book. I was very sad when Covid killed it off.

At the end of the Ezra Klein podcast described above, Jonathan Haidt was asked to recommend three books. His response was:

1. The Stoic Challenge by William B. Irvine

2. Deep Work by Cal Newport

3. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

I’ve been thinking how much I’d like to read one of these books with others.

If you’re interested in reading one of these with me, let me know in the comments below. Then together we could work out (1) which book, (2) when we’d read it and (3) how we might discuss it.