Today I'm launching a newsletter on technology that helps rather than hurts human understanding, and human understanding that helps us create better technology. It's called Humane Ingenuity. Subscribe here: buttondown.email/dancohen A preview on my blog: dancohen.org/2019/09/04/huma…

"Reader Responses, Summer 2026"—Good thoughts, writing, & projects from the readers of Humane Ingenuity, incl. feedback on reducing the environmental impact of AI, saving the scientific record, & using AI to supplement rather than replace human thought newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: “Scholarship Will Soon Be Much Harder to Save” — It’s not easy to be confident in a body of knowledge that has phantom limbs newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: “How Can We Minimize the Environmental Impact of Our AI Use?” — It’s not easy being green when there’s little research on the energy consumption of specific AI tasks newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter Humane Ingenuity: “The Breath of the Author” — The palpable presence of someone else’s mind in our best writing should give us pause about the encroachment of AI text newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

A new essay: “Perils of the New Armchair Scholarship” — Like nineteenth-century scholars who wrote about the world without deeply engaging with it, academics who lean too heavily on AI risk becoming paper-thin newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New essay: “A Museum’s Sublime Hallucinations” — Sometimes you need the fake to show you what’s real (a love letter to the Museum of Jurassic Technology) newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New essay: “Can AI Prompt Us to Ask New Questions?” — Not with chatbots as we know them, but perhaps with what comes next newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

A special issue of my newsletter for Martin Luther King Jr. Day: “A Hero's Iconography” — A shocking photograph featured a brave man — and visual echoes of the art he loved newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: "Far From Reassuring" — AI companies need to focus on limits, not limitless possibilities, to get the public on board newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: "The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition" — One of the hardest problems in digital humanities has finally been solved, and it's a good use of AI newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: "The Index and the Vector" — Converting ambiguity into precision can help a broader audience discover and learn from collections newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: "The Reboot of Digital Humanities Now" — Discover the latest work from across the field and around the world newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

My take on the landmark $1.5 billion settlement between authors and Anthropic: newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter, in which a bell tower with a surprising name is in danger of falling newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: "AI and Libraries, Archives, and Museums, Loosely Coupled"—A new framework provides a way for cultural heritage institutions to take advantage of the tech w/ fewer misgivings, & to serve students, scholars, & the public better newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: “The Unresolved Tension Between AI and Learning” — If education is accelerated using AI, will we lose some crucial aspects of learning that will prove to be problematic? newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: “Synths and Sensibility” — From Beethoven to Kraftwerk, innovative artists have used new technology to make music more human, not less newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: “No Happy Medium for Books” — A court ruling curtails the circulation of the written word newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: “Break Expectations” — Where does the ability of AI to mimic human expression end? Poetry provides a helpful case study newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…

New issue of my newsletter: “AI Comes for Music” — As the record labels sue AI companies for generating derivative songs, let us ask: What makes a song original and human anyway? (Includes non-spoiler references to Robin Sloan’s new novel Moonbound.) newsletter.dancohen.org/arch…