On many occasions, I have written about my trusted set of Funk & Wagnalls encylopedia set. I remember using them to write about farming in the U.S. Midwest and the post-independence Congo. I remember being amazed by how much information could be stored on a microfiche at the local library in the early to mid-1970s. At the time, both of those offered unprecedented information and knowledge at your fingertips.
Summary Table (Estimated Trust Levels)
Source
Trust 1975 (%)
Trust 2000 (%)
Trust 2025 (%)
Trend (1975–2025)
Encyclopedias
90
80
60
Decline (~30%)
Microfiche
80
70
50
Decline (~30%)
Yahoo
0
60
20
Rise and Fall (~20%)
Google
0
70
40
Rise and Decline (~40%)
AI
10
20
35
Rise (~25%)
Generative AI
0
0
25
Emergence (~25%)
Newspapers
70
55
34
Decline (~36%)
Television
75
60
36
Decline (~39%)
Radio
65
50
38
Decline (~27%)
Critical Assessment
While the above “Trust Table” raises many questions, it also highlights a common thread through each source.
Encyclopedias, microfiche, Yahoo, Google, AI, Generative AI, newspapers, television, and radio all serve as mediums for storing, transmitting, and accessing information and knowledge. Despite their technological differences and historical contexts, they share several fundamental similarities.
The reason I point this out is that one of the big raps against Generative AI, and questions about Agentic AI’s reliability are the potential for hallucinations and learning process outside human involvement and oversight. However, if you think about – besides speed and accesibility, AI output and the output of the various mediums before it still require one important element to ensure reliability and accuracy: Human critical thinking!
In this regard, the era and technology is largely irrelevant if we fail to apply our own experience and expertise to filter, understand,and practically apply the information we are receiving regardless of how it is delivered. In short we are not, nor should we ever be spectator human receptacles accepting everything dumped in our laps as fact or truth to be acted on in blind faith.
The only threat Generative AI and Agentic AI represents to humans originates with our own laziness.
My AI Interview With Marshall Macluhan
Marshall McLuhan, renowned for his assertion that “the medium is the message,” emphasized that the form of a medium profoundly influences how its content is perceived and how it affects society. In the context of Generative AI and Agentic AI, McLuhan’s theories remain strikingly relevant.
Here is what AGentic AI Marshall said to me when I asked him: “Marshall, how do we humans navigate today and tomorrow’s emerging AI landscape?”
MM Reply: I would likely advocate for a conscious and critical approach to integrating AI into society. Recognizing that the medium shapes our perceptions and interactions, it’s essential to understand and guide how AI technologies influence our communication, relationships, and culture. By doing so, we can harness the benefits of AI while mitigating potential drawbacks, ensuring that these powerful mediums serve to enhance human experience rather than diminish it.
My (human) thougts exactly:
“The critical part of the human-led agent-based model is that the continuous learning capabilities of the algorithms occur by adapting to how internal and external human agents work in the real world in the end-to-end supply chain to effectively and efficiently manage and grade performance metrics from order placement through to order delivery. In essence, the Agent-Based Metaprise model performs a self-cleaning of the data as a part of the human agents’ daily routine inputs becoming a seamless part of the order to fulfillment process.”– What is continuous, self-cleaning data?, Procurement Insights (April 15th, 2025)
Procurement Insights
What do encyclopedias, microfiche, Google, and Generative AI have in common? Marshall tells us today!
Posted on April 18, 2025
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On many occasions, I have written about my trusted set of Funk & Wagnalls encylopedia set. I remember using them to write about farming in the U.S. Midwest and the post-independence Congo. I remember being amazed by how much information could be stored on a microfiche at the local library in the early to mid-1970s. At the time, both of those offered unprecedented information and knowledge at your fingertips.
Summary Table (Estimated Trust Levels)
Critical Assessment
While the above “Trust Table” raises many questions, it also highlights a common thread through each source.
Encyclopedias, microfiche, Yahoo, Google, AI, Generative AI, newspapers, television, and radio all serve as mediums for storing, transmitting, and accessing information and knowledge. Despite their technological differences and historical contexts, they share several fundamental similarities.
The reason I point this out is that one of the big raps against Generative AI, and questions about Agentic AI’s reliability are the potential for hallucinations and learning process outside human involvement and oversight. However, if you think about – besides speed and accesibility, AI output and the output of the various mediums before it still require one important element to ensure reliability and accuracy: Human critical thinking!
In this regard, the era and technology is largely irrelevant if we fail to apply our own experience and expertise to filter, understand,and practically apply the information we are receiving regardless of how it is delivered. In short we are not, nor should we ever be spectator human receptacles accepting everything dumped in our laps as fact or truth to be acted on in blind faith.
The only threat Generative AI and Agentic AI represents to humans originates with our own laziness.
My AI Interview With Marshall Macluhan
Marshall McLuhan, renowned for his assertion that “the medium is the message,” emphasized that the form of a medium profoundly influences how its content is perceived and how it affects society. In the context of Generative AI and Agentic AI, McLuhan’s theories remain strikingly relevant.
Here is what AGentic AI Marshall said to me when I asked him: “Marshall, how do we humans navigate today and tomorrow’s emerging AI landscape?”
MM Reply: I would likely advocate for a conscious and critical approach to integrating AI into society. Recognizing that the medium shapes our perceptions and interactions, it’s essential to understand and guide how AI technologies influence our communication, relationships, and culture. By doing so, we can harness the benefits of AI while mitigating potential drawbacks, ensuring that these powerful mediums serve to enhance human experience rather than diminish it.
My (human) thougts exactly:
“The critical part of the human-led agent-based model is that the continuous learning capabilities of the algorithms occur by adapting to how internal and external human agents work in the real world in the end-to-end supply chain to effectively and efficiently manage and grade performance metrics from order placement through to order delivery. In essence, the Agent-Based Metaprise model performs a self-cleaning of the data as a part of the human agents’ daily routine inputs becoming a seamless part of the order to fulfillment process.” – What is continuous, self-cleaning data?, Procurement Insights (April 15th, 2025)
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