Humbled and honored that ALA included my Jan 3rd essay in this week's member communication under this title. Several colleagues also suggested I share it on Connect for deeper discussion. I've been exploring expanding notions of intellectual freedom through a series of pieces over the past few years: (2024) Quit Lit: rejecting self-censorship is also intellectual freedom; (2025) Freedom of intelligence: The new intellectual freedom; and several more on AI, copyright, public domain, reading identities, and now this piece on self-censorship in the attention economy: The Self-Censorship They Didn't Want to Hear About: On Intellectual Freedom, Information Health, and the Future Selves We're Afraid to Become. The latest explores a tension that I've also seen many grapple with here: We've built robust frameworks for fighting visible censorship-book bans, state control, political interference. But what about the Huxleyan threats? The algorithmic systems that fragment attention, the engagement mechanics that make sustained reading difficult, the data infrastructure designed to prevent the formation of selves capable of caring deeply about books? Here's the link to the fully open public scholarship essay: infophilia.substack.com/p/... Share it, cite it, argue with it-I'd genuinely welcome thoughts, pushback, and different perspectives from you. Thank you.
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Anita Sundaram Coleman, PhD | Infophilia, A Positive Psychology of Information
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