Friday marked the fourth installation of Reclaim Hosting‘s Bloggers Anonymous series on ReclaimTV, so we’re officially on a roll. In this episode we were joined by Middlebury College’s Amy Collier and Tom Woodward who generously shared both their blog origin stories as well as their recent collaborative writing project exploring AI.
The 2024 iteration of Middlebury College’s Demystifying AI series
In 2017 Amy started the Digital Detox initiative at Middlebury College so participants could critically examine the role technology plays in their lives. Over the last two years it has focused specifically on trying to demystify AI. In the 2024 iteration of this theme that took the form of helping folks understand these new tools and thinking through how they work. Each tool was often framed by what AI is and is not, such as “it’s not magic, it’s math,” in an attempt to resist the urge to obfuscate the tech behind these tools. What’s more, Tom designed an interactive “course” site wherein the community could play with the tools and then share their results as a means of engaging the tech to surface findings, issues, and lingering questions.
The 2025 iteration of Middlebury College’s Demystifying AI series
For this year’s iteration, the focus of Demystifying AI pivoted from specific tools to the larger questions at the heart of the cultural impact of AI. This year’s Detox transformed from playful prompts to a topical deep-dive that helps frame many of these big questions through linked resources. It not only aims to orient participants in a cacophonous space of pronouncements and manifestos, but also intends to help them navigate the polarized discourse surrounding AI. At the heart of this year’s Detox is a herculean shared writing project through which they share their collaborative findings with others, a process that has pushed the entire team at Middlebury beyond surface mud slinging on the topic in order to dig in and inform not only themselves, but also the broader community.
I love this project that features the critical role of writing as intellectual exploration, professional development, and the generative attempt to move beyond simple dichotomies to provide much needed context, subtlety, and critique (all in an open, web-based blog/site easily shared and modeled, it’s like 2008 up in here!). Seems like this whole blogging thing might have legs!
