The Age of Enhancement

What happens when the messiness of life can be brushed away with a click of a button?

A few days ago, I drew this:

I think it’s pretty good.

But it’s messy. I drew the birds that way because, at some point, I saw birds like that in a painting and thought they looked nice. I drew the sun that way because I was recently drawing with my 4-year-old (who wasn’t sure how to draw a sun) and that’s the way I’d had been taught. I drew the tree that way because, apparently, no one ever showed me how to improve it and no one ever bothered to explain to me that the tops of trees have absolutely no twirls and swirls. And I drew the swing that way for a very important reason. My hand slipped.

My history and life story is in the mess.

Now, I am fully aware that I could “enhance” this drawing quickly and easily. In fact, I can click a button and get this through Canva:

I mean, will it win any awards? No. Will it even get an A- in an Art class? No, probably not.

But the mess is gone.

Here’s why that matters.

Entering the Age of Enhancement

I’m going to wager a guess.

I think the question of “enhancement” is going to dominate the next decade or so. We’re going to ask a lot of questions:

• Should I enhance the picture of myself?

• Should I enhance the picture I drew?

• Should I enhance my writing?

• Should I enhance my video?

• Should I enhance my podcast?

And those are before AI and biomachinery really take off. It’s completely possible that, before we know it, we’ll be asking questions like this:

• Should I enhance my memory with that brain chip?

• Should I enhance my sight with these cool AI glasses?

In fact, thanks to Elon Musk and Meta, we might be asking these questions sooner rather than later.

Questions about whether to enhance, what to enhance, and how to enhance will become watershed moments for our own existence. They will be huge parts of the people who we become. Our answers to these questions will set us apart from others.

That’s why I think the “The Age of Enhancement” is actually much better name for our era than “The Age of AI.” For one, “The Age of AI” is so boring. For another, AI will (most likely) infringe on almost every part of our lives, to the point that we’ll have less and less things to make decisions about. When it comes to questions about enhancement, on the contrary, our answers will really matter.

So, what does that mean for education?

Learning is Messy

Let’s get back to those images I started with.

If I were to say which one were more valuable to me, it would be the first one without question. It’s worse, but I had a lot of control over it. It’s mine.

But if I were handing in this as an assignment (assuming I had free reign over whether I used AI and everything else), I would choose the second one every time. It’s better.

I think that dynamic is going to plague students going forward. In fact, we’re already seeing it.

Our students—and our children—are growing up at a time when a single click on a computer can push away the mess.

It may be good for businesses. But it could be horrible for education.

I want to see my students’ messy first drafts, because (1) they give me more information about how my students think and (2) they are beautiful representations of my students.

Learning is messy. To help my students out as much as possible, I need to see the mess.

But encouraging students to show me that mess before running it through an AI program? That’s a hard-sell.

Out students will be met with more and more buttons designed to clean things up and hide the mess.

And why wouldn’t our students click those buttons?

I would.

This Is Not A New Thing

The dynamics at play here have been at play for a while.

That’s why “mentor texts” (with all of their usefulness) remain somewhat problematic.

I’m taking the idea of mentor texts from Writing Studies. The idea is relatively simple. To become better writers, we spend time reading and analyzing texts written by expert writers. We take on these texts as “mentors,” looking up to them and learning from them.

Mentor texts are extremely useful. The problem is that expert texts are really good at hiding the mess.

For example, in one of my college writing classes, my students are reading the opening of Capote’s In Cold Blood. It’s a beautifully written book. The opening is exquisite.

But…

It took Capote a really long time to write it. He wrote copious notes. He turned those notes into a really large draft. Then, he wrote and rewrote. He redrafted and rewrote.

It was a long and messy process.

But my students just see the clean and polished end-product. So, our students are set up to idolize writing without mess, without clutter.

The ability to enhance our writing, images, and video plays right into that dynamic.

So…?

Enhancement is not inherently a bad thing.

In the classroom, the students’ abilities to enhance their work and then evaluate the quality of the enhancement will, undoubtedly, be essential.

And still, we’ll need to create educational spaces that are so welcoming, so dynamic that our students want to show us their messy first drafts.

Maybe students will even be proud of them.

But doing that requires rethinking the classroom.

My Experiment

As always, this post was an experiment.

I am about 72% sure that my argument makes sense, and 28% sure that I’m barking up the wrong tree.

So, feel free to chime in and let me know if I’m off base or not.

I’m open to correction.

I’m open to being convinced otherwise.