Book review: The AI of Columbus by Hans Hoornstra.
If you read Hans Hoornstra's book, "The AI of Columbus" reads, the falling quarters fly around your ears. In my opinion, Hans Hoornstra not only wrote one of the best books on AI, he gives you the courage to go ahead and shape the changes using the very clear and understandable Columbus model.
His analysis is nuanced, and he knows better than anyone to explain the impact of AI from a context that puts historical developments, the opportunities and obstacles of our education system and our own into a coherent perspective. With AI as the new wind in our sails, we are challenged to rediscover what it means to be human - learning, seeking, yearning.
With his book, Hoornstra provides an important tool for shaping the future of education in the AI era. He manages to make the abstract tangible, without oversimplifying it. Not an anthology of what can (or cannot) be done with AI, but a clear explanation of concepts that really make you think. AI is not portrayed as yet another hype or horror story, but a magnifying glass on who we have become and who we can be. AI is not just a technological upheaval, it is a mirror of our mental space. And yes - that is quite confrontational here and there.
His metaphor of Columbus gets to the heart of the matter: discovery is not knowing what you are looking for, but knowing that you have to go. And it is precisely that attitude, that agility of mind, that makes Columbus' AI so relevant to me. In times when many education professionals, policymakers and leaders often doubt or sometimes mainly want to keep what is, this book invites dreams, daring and actual change.
The three-pronged approach of driving, connecting and bearing skills is not a model for on the flip chart, but an inner compass for those who dare to reinvent themselves and education. Hoornstra knows better than anyone that change starts with meaning - and meaning starts with language.
As a former language teacher, I was particularly struck by the role of language that Hoornstra uses in his book. Language as a bridge between past and future. Language as that uniquely human ability to imagine something that is not yet there. And thus also as a key to a new learning landscape, in which technology does not replace our thinking, but challenges us to think better.
This is a book for everyone who cares about education. For both the guardians of what is good about our education and the educational innovators, thinkers, dreamers and doers. For those who realise that we are on the eve of a paradigm shift in which ownership, curiosity and human connection will become more decisive than ever.
Highly recommended!
