Imitation, Representation, and the Eclipse of the Original

We are in the dawn of a revolution in communications technology far outstripping the transformative power of the printing press, possibly approaching the significance of the invention of the written letter. Large Language Models combined with conversational agents forming C-LLMs have already – openly and clandestinely – made an impact on schools and businesses, academic research and mass media. In this paper I discuss some important challenges that these technologies pose to some prevailing core ideas of education. Against the background of the safe assumption that C-LLMs are here to stay, I here explore the notion of a school as a possible space for counteraction through the lens of the critique of the technology of the written word in Plato’s Phaedrus and his notion of arete or virtue. The aim is to see what opportunities open for a reimagining of the school as a place for learning in a time where the patterns of language use are being radically transformed.