If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him
Lessons for librarians, AI, and the art of asking better questions
I had the opportunity to deliver a keynote with the CULC - Canadian Urban Libraries Council - Futures Lab. I promised them a blog to accompany my talk and wanted to use an old Zen koan:
A koan is a paradoxical statement, question, or short story used in Zen Buddhist tradition to provoke deep reflection, disrupt habitual thinking, and spark insight beyond logical reasoning. It’s a puzzle without an answer, yet it instigates dialogue. My 15-year-old would say it’s a “thirst trap” or a way for people to engage reflexively.
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
Disruptive. Unnerving. But—essential. This isn’t about violence or heresy. It’s a call to doubt easy answers and idolized expertise, whether the idol is AI, data, or the reassuring authority of “the way things have always been.” For librarians—the architects of collective memory—this koan is both a caution and a compass.
Tools, including the shiniest AI, are always means, never ends. A tech demo is not wisdom; a chatbot is not a mission statement, and the gods have feet of clay.
I started my career in ruins
I began my own journey in literal ruins, trowel in hand, unearthing Etruscan artifacts in Tuscany. I’ve followed stories from dirt to data: anthropologist, coder, cognitive scientist, now CEO. Through every role, meaning and language have been my compass.
This is why I’m drawn, over and over again, to librarians: the last great defenders of meaning. The circulators, connectors, and compassionate hackers of the world’s memory. You, more than anyone, know that no tool is sacred until it justifies its keep.
The “thirsty work”
Every leap in library history—the clay tablet, the printing press, the digital catalog—started as a toy. Something to poke, play, and sometimes ignore. Only after librarians bent these inventions to real, thirsty work did they become tools.
What counts as "thirsty work"?
The repetitive frustrations that wear you down.
The questions patrons keep asking that current systems don’t answer.
The slow, necessary tasks that no one ever has enough hands for.
AI is built for this. But if you let it in without purpose, it will march up and down your reference desk like a battery-operated puppy: adorable, but not much help.
Before you ask if AI is a threat, ask:
“What part of my day would I gladly delegate, if I trusted the tool?”
“What problem am I actually solving?”
Without that, AI is a sandwich in search of a picnic.
Making a thirst trap: playing with patron curiosity
Why not turn curiosity into an asset? Today’s “thirst traps” might make you think of influencers and attention-hacking apps, but let’s be honest—the real grandmasters of capturing human longing are the Jesuits with their confessions, Buddhist teachers with their riddles, and yes, the wranglers of modern cults and platforms. Their aim? To capture the curious, collect truth, and sometimes, to manipulate. Social media thirst traps are amateur hour compared to these giants.
At heart, all thirst traps—ancient or algorithmic—work by drawing out something deeply human: our desire to be seen, to know, to belong. In most digital spaces, you pay for this with data, attention, or a retail impulse buy.
But what if libraries flipped the script? Imagine our thirst traps: not for manipulation, but for insight—a digital suggestion box, an “Ask Me Anything” wall where patrons safely share real questions.
Here’s the truth that most IT people see behind the scenes: the questions filling our logs are less menacing and more mundane than the hype suggests. Most queries are simple, poignant, sometimes trivial:
“How do I get rich without working very hard?”
“What stock should I buy next?”
Nothing dark or dystopic—mostly vulnerable, honest, even playful.
When librarians actually see the logs of what people are asking AI, they realize: this isn’t Terminator. It isn’t magic. It’s a long tail of ordinary, hopeful, sometimes hilariously basic curiosity. There’s no reason to fear the machine—only to learn how to shape it and guide others.
This is where librarians step forward. You are uniquely trained to turn data points into dialogue, to turn patron questions into learning moments.
Creating a “thirst trap” for libraries isn’t a trick—it’s stewardship. It’s engineering encounters where patrons get to whisper their wonders in digital privacy.
Doesn’t that feel almost luxurious these days? A space where people can wonder, experiment, even confess, in a library context—free from surveillance capitalism, shielded from algorithms that only want to sell, surveil, or addict.
So let’s use our powers for good.
Let’s make our own digital wishing wells, where curiosity isn’t captured, but cultivated—and the machine becomes a companion for discovery, not a competitor for meaning.
AI is a mirror, not a magic wand
AI is not magic. It’s a mirror—sometimes funhouse, sometimes revealing nothing more than a polished surface. It reflects our questions, our biases, our blind spots - but we, 2B humans, need to have access to how our utterances are shaping the machine’s sensitivity.
Machines are sensitive: They can spot subtle, hidden patterns at scale.
Humans are specific: We see meaning in the mess, we know which patterns matter.
The true alchemy is here: AI surfaces patterns, and humans decide what matters.
Librarians, the gift is yours—you see context, exercise judgment, and provide the empathy machines cannot.
Stewardship in the age of AI
With power comes responsibility:
Ethics and privacy: Ask first. Show the trade. Never take data for granted.
Sustainability: Build small, iterate, prefer meaningful over maximal. Libraries know how to steward finite resources.
Transparency: Opt for AI systems that are auditable, explainable, and updatable. Version history isn’t just for code; it's for trust. You, the human, should understand what and where your questions are directed and how they influence the AI's behavior. You, the librarians, should have access to the questions your patrons are asking, OR provide your patrons with dignified privacy to converse with an AI without harvesting their data.
Play is the librarian’s new superpower
What turns a toy into a tool? Play. Not just tinkering for fun—play as experiment, as courage, as an act of participatory meaning-making. Brian Pichman, my collaborator-in-crime, embodies this spirit, testing every tool he can get his hands on, joyfully failing, and occasionally finding gold. There is a list at the bottom of this blog of all the tools he has demoed, and he has graciously given me his deck, which I use to showcase the numerous tools available and the fun to be had.
The more you play, the more you learn what sticks and what’s just another passing trend. Put your hands on the keyboard and play!
The path, not the idol
Never let AI become the Buddha on your road. Don’t let data—or your hard-won expertise—become the endpoint. Actual librarians are guides, always on the move, making meaning, not hoarding power.
So, make your thirsty work visible. Share your experiments. Question authority—especially when it is algorithmic, and most especially when it’s your own. AI’s best future will depend on you: your doubts, your creativity, your commitment to humanity.
Thank you for tending the memory, the meaning, and the future of our shared stacks.
The book is open. The table is set. What’s the next question?
The tools referenced and used:
Rytr: AI-powered content generation platform for writing.
Supermachine: Creative platform for generating art and visuals.
Steve.AI: Online video creation platform.
Flicky: Video tool for generating various types of videos.
Suno AI: Tool for creating songs.
Portrait Background Remover: Tool for editing images (portrait focus).
Object Background Remover: Tool for removing objects from images.
Object Eraser: Tool for erasing specific objects in images.
Krisp: AI tool for supercharging voice productivity.
Poised: AI-powered voice assistant for meetings.
MeetGeek: Tool for meeting transcription and summaries.
Granola: Meeting summarization tool.
Superhuman: Email management tool for efficiency.
Quuu: Tool for finding relatable social media content.
Missinglettr: Streamlines social media sharing.
Ocoya: Automated social media posting with AI.
BeHuman AI: Tool for cloning yourself digitally.
Wisecut: Video editing software.
Formula Dog: AI tool for generating formulas in Excel, Google Sheets, Airtable, and Notion.
Cryfe: AI tool for financial data.
Interviewer.AI: AI tool for conducting interviews.
Dubverse: Assistive AI technology (often used for multilingual video dubbing).
Darktrace: Tool for IT security.
KnowBe4: Tool for IT security.
Malwarebytes: Tool for IT security.
Windows Defender: Tool for IT security.
Cleanshot: Tool for screen capture and annotation.
Theano: AI tool for machine learning (open-source).
Neptune AI: AI tool for managing metadata.