Deep Literacy in a Digital Age
is Liberation
Deep Literacy is a vision of the human
grounded in language as an expression of the human spirit.
Reading and writing
are spiritual technologies.
Their ethic—meditative thinking—meets our deepest human needs:
focus
empathy
compassion
concentration
self-understanding
meaning
wholeness
authenticity
Slow, meditative thinking is the essence of our humanity.
We live in “an ecosystem
of interruption technologies.”
—Cory Doctorow
journalist and author of I, Robot
Take back your brain from the internet.
We teach you how.
Digital Tech Stole Your Attention
“The last thing these
companies want is
to encourage leisurely reading
or slow, concentrated thought.
It is in their economic interest
to drive us to distraction.”
- Nicholas Carr
“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
You are not a machine.
Machines have
controllers.
You have a mind.
Liberate it.
“When language dies,
out of carelessness,
disuse, indifference
and absence of esteem…
all users and makers
are accountable for its demise.
We do language.
That may be the measure
of our lives."
-Toni Morrison
”Nobel Prize in Literature Speech,” 1993
Our Values
& Philosophy
Values
mind over machine
transformation over transaction
substance over speed
quality over clicks
understanding over mining information
“The question of how to
educate
is really the same
as asking, ‘How should we
communicate?’”
- Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Toward a Meaningful Life
Deep Literacy in a Digital Age
ALEX + SAMUEL’S SHARED PHILOSOPHY
Artificial Intelligence can complete your unfinished sentences. AI can correct your spelling and grammar. AI can even write all of your papers. But, the machine did it. Not you. And maybe you are okay with that.
Or maybe you want to voice your own mind.
We are offering a path to you. Right here. Right now. A path to becoming human.
Reading and writing are two of the most powerful spiritual technologies available for self-transformation. Their powers combined offer a path to your Self. Why?
Because when we choose to listen carefully to the word, we know who we are in the world.
Digital tech, while bringing many benefits like meeting you on Google Meet or Zoom, also destroys attention and awareness, the space needed to be curious, to wonder, and to express questions.
And remember this: without language, there is no Scientific Revolution. There is no Silicon Valley. The word made tech. Without language, there is no way to articulate, publish, and share innovation and discovery. Reading and writing are how science happened and is happening. There is no science and tech culture without Deep Literacy because…
Reading and writing invite you to a dynamic dialogue between your self, the word, and the world. They ask you to concentrate deeply, to still your mind and to meditate on difficult problems and to respond responsibly with care and attention.
Language is a vehicle for human curiosity and discovery. Deep literacy trains our ability for empathy, compassion, holistic thinking and nuance over the Now.
The internet, it’s no secret, has systematically destroyed our ability to connect with ourselves and others. Through the practice of deep literacy, you can change that.
The practice of deep literacy—of listening, reading and writing as spiritual technologies—offer you a path to becoming human in a machine dominated world.
“What language AI's make up for in efficiency
they lack in humanity.”
- Philip Ball,
"ChatGPT Is a Mirror of Our Times”
As technology takes over
more of our work…
people who master
the human abilities
that are fading all around us
will be the most valuable
people in our world.”
― Geoff Colvin,
“What High Achievers Know That Machines Never Will”
Philosophers
& Founders
The Word Made Tech
We teach reading and writing as powerful spiritual technologies
for self-understanding and for freeing your mind.
BECOME HUMAN in a MACHINE WORLD
Alexandra Barylski is the Executive Editor of The Marginalia Review of Books, an award-winning poet, a deep literacy advocate and entrepreneur.
As the Executive Editor, she works with the world’s leading scholars, writers, scientists, and artists. And she edits and curates their work for a public audience.
Writers who work with Alex are published in major academic presses, leading journals, and news outlets like The Washington Post and New York Times. Her clients have published in major magazines, won prestigious literary prizes, and have been awarded full scholarships to universities like Stanford and Yale.
She is also an award-winning poet, artist, and a graduate of Yale Divinity School, where she studied poetry and religion with Christian Wiman, former editor of Poetry magazine. In 2018, she was a Peter Taylor Fellow for the Kenyon Review, and her interviewers with poets Afaa Weaver and Ocean Vuong have been featured at Kenyon Review podcast and the Poetry Foundation.
In 2021, she co-founded The Writing College (TWC) with philosopher and knowledge technologist, Samuel Loncar, Ph.D. At The Writing College, she teaches deep literacy as a philosophical practice founded on two decades of experience in deep literacy research and work in writing labs (like The Citadel, SC), liberal arts universities (like College of Charleston, SC), technical colleges, prisons, and prep-schools.
“Alexandra Barylski is a perceptive, broad-minded, and unfailingly intelligent editor. Any aspiring or established writer would be lucky to work with her.”
- Christian Wiman | poet, author, and former editor of Poetry magazine
Samuel Loncar, Ph.D. (Yale) is a public philosopher and social entrepreneur working at the intersection of science, art, spirituality, and technology.
As a speaker, he has taught at Yale University, Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg, consulted with clients like the United Nations, and has been a panelist with MacArthur Fellow, Trevor Paglen and conceptual artist, Sarah Meyohas. His interviewing work includes conversations with Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, writer and former editor of Nature, Philip Ball, and the poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama.
Samuel is the Co-Founder of The Writing College and the Editor of the Marginalia Review of Books, a magazine integrating the research university and public culture. At Marginalia, he designs and oversees the integration of science and humanistic research for a global audience of over 100,000 and serves as Director of the Meanings of Science Project.
His work as a writer has been read at Google, taught in classes and universities across the world, featured in The Browser, and translated into Chinese and Farsi. His publications include poetry, reviews and essays, peer-reviewed scholarly articles in philosophy, religion and science, and original audio courses. His podcast, Becoming Human: A Show for a Species in Crisis, offers his original research and ideas to a wide audience.
He is writing a book on science as a spiritual revolution for Columbia University Press.
The true purpose of education
“The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself. . .
To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. . .The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it—at no matter what risk.
This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.”
-James Baldwin
"A Talk to Teachers”