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  • On the 20th anniversary of Zotero’s 1.0 release on October 5, 2006, I wrote a history of the collaboration and years it took to create the popular research tool now used by over 20 million people: “The Slow Formation of Durable Software“

    A web browser shows the library catalog of George Mason University, with a panel on top showing the capture of a bibliographic reference.

    → 11:55 AM, Oct 6

  • New issue of my newsletter: “Reader Responses, Summer 2026” — Good thoughts, writing, and projects from the readers of Humane Ingenuity, including feedback on reducing the environmental impact of AI, saving the scientific record, and using AI to supplement, rather than replace, human thought

    Two arms place folder notes into a small box shaped like a red British postal box, which says "Worry Box" on it

    → 10:49 AM, Sep 18

  • 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

    Gold-rimmed glasses lie on a handwritten letter.

    → 10:08 AM, Sep 2

  • “A Major New Grant for a Library-Led Approach to AI and Books“—A 5-year, $5 million grant to HathiTrust, w/ Northeastern University Library & Authors Alliance as partners, will create responsible, equitable, & transparent services that leverage AI for the public good and scholarly discovery

    A multistory library connected by stairs, viewed in the evening from the atrium.

    → 2:12 PM, Aug 27

  • 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

    In a field of wheat, six children look up at a gigantic machine that looks like a metal bridge with a massive mill wheel at the end of it.

    → 11:30 AM, Aug 11

  • 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

    An old black-and-white photo of a well-dressed woman with an elaborate satin hat looking in the mirror, with a picture of mother and child on the wall in the background.

    → 12:57 PM, Jul 30

  • 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

    A well-dressed man reclines in a plush pink chair, asleep, as books with faces fly around the library he is in.

    → 5:31 PM, Jul 14

  • New issue of my newsletter: “The Kids Are All Right” — Advice I will not give, and books I have not written

    A banner with “2026” on it

    → 9:21 AM, Jun 15

  • New issue of my newsletter: “A Framework for Books and AI in the Public Interest” — How libraries could create a thoughtful and ethical interface between their shelves and artificial intelligence

    Bookshelves recede into the distance

    → 10:02 AM, May 1

  • New issue of my newsletter: “The Role of a New Machine” — An old book puts today’s new technology in perspective

    A photograph of half of a biege and blue computer keyboard

    → 3:21 PM, Apr 20

  • New issue of my newsletter: “Vibe Analysis” — Despite its unserious name, vibe coding shows promise for elements of serious scholarly work

    A multicolored painting of nature, factories, housing, and skyscrapers

    → 1:27 PM, Apr 6

  • 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)

    A geometrical diagram series showing three ways that a cone can intersect with a plane

    → 12:37 PM, Mar 6

  • The second piece in my series on finding the right line between human thought and AI assistance: “Can AI Prompt Us to Ask New Questions?”

    We may very well look back on our first years of engagement with AI in forms like ChatGPT as we now look back on AOL before the flourishing of the World Wide Web — a comfortable, contained, and relatively inflexible introduction to a new digital world. The flexibility and expansiveness of the Web — the fact that anyone could assemble sites and services from servers, collections, and data from around the world — made it a much better environment for the generation of new ideas.

    → 2:34 PM, Feb 25

  • New essay: “Can AI Prompt Us to Ask New Questions?” — Not with chatbots as we know them, but perhaps with what comes next

    An old book is open to a map showing the Atlantic Ocean as it was conceived in the sixteenth century

    → 10:27 AM, Feb 23

  • And an occasional reminder that you can subscribe to my newsletter at newsletter.dancohen.org

    → 3:48 PM, Feb 3

  • New issue of my newsletter: “Where Should Scholars Draw the Line on AI?” — Between the poles of Zero AI and AI For Everything lies a vast, poorly mapped middle ground

    A black and white photograph of a library at night from the outside, with large glass windows showing the stacks and people studying

    → 3:47 PM, Feb 3

  • 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

    A black and white photograph of a Black man in a plaza being attacked by a White teenager brandishing the American flag

    → 11:19 AM, Jan 19

  • New issue of my newsletter: “Far From Reassuring” — AI companies need to focus on limits, not limitless possibilities, to get the public on board

    A receding view of the inside of a large attic, in which there are metal and wood beams and three colored glass panels

    → 3:26 PM, Jan 15
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