Literacy-slop

I found I had so much to say about Emily Segal's latest Nemesis Memos post, that I not only transferred it from Thought Shrapnel to here, but I think this is going to have to be a couple of posts. Segal is talking about the world of aesthetics as it relates to AI, but it's absolutely relevant to the world of digital literacies. Taste is not really a property of various objects. It is a socially validated relation between objects, people, histories, scenes, and timing.If we swap “Digital literacy” for “Taste” then it's a socially-negotiated relation between people, tools, practices, contexts, and communities. Segal discusses the ways in which AI-generated designs look almost right, but feel a bit hollow. The uncanny valley is produced by AI knowing what the visible signs of taste should be (e.g. a Dieter Rams book on a shelf) but they're extracted from the social relations that give them meaning, and redeployed generically.I would say the biggest thing people are missing about taste…