Long Live the Dewey Decimal System

My father-in-law owed me some money and jokingly said, “I’ll add it to their 529 and hopefully it can buy a few books.”

I replied, “But the books will all be digital by then!”

I paused.

“Will they even need to buy history books?”

I got excited that college tuition may come down!

Will they even need history class?

ChatGPT and the like can recount any history and provide any point of view.

For example, a prompt could work like this: “What was the sentiment of World War II from a German citizen’s perspective?”

That could be followed up with: “Provide some historical quotes from notable German citizens during this time.”

And then, “What was the sentiment of World War II from a British citizen’s perspective?”

You could even contrive a hypothetical dialogue between the two to make it more interesting: “Write a hypothetical dialogue between the two cohorts who meet in a coffee shop in the style of a historical fiction novel.”

Of course, you would need references.

Today, the new librarians are prompt engineers.

The prompts are the Dewy Decimal System.

The books remain the sources, training the model.

And ChatGPT is the entire stacks summoned in one sentence.

But what about the students?

Well the students sign their name on the paper, co-written by ChatGPT.

But they still mark their judgement, creativity, and desire to learn.

There’s still a future worth investing in.