Umberto Eco once argued that the real danger of hypertext isn't information overload — it's the collapse of resistance. In a printed book, the author makes choices that close doors; the reader has to work against the structure to find what the author didn't say. AI-assisted writing and communication does something similar, but more quietly: it removes the friction that used to produce thought. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky called the zone between what you can do alone and what you can do with help the 'zone of proximal development' — but the point was that a good scaffold withdraws as competence grows. The scaffold that never withdraws doesn't teach; it replaces. So the practical question isn't whether to use these tools, but whether you're still doing the effortful part — the part where resistance produces something no smooth output could. Before you accept the polished draft today, ask what you were actually struggling to think through before you handed it over.

What were you struggling to articulate before the tool finished your sentence — and did you lose that struggle, or resolve it?

Drawing from Soviet developmental psychology / Vygotskian theory — Lev Vygotsky