CONCEPT
Network Literacy
The capacity to read the configuration of actants that produces the outputs one depends on — the core skill the reassembled builder must cultivate and the educational prerequisite for governance adequate to AI-mediated production.
Network literacy is the ability to see the network: to identify the actants contributing to an outcome, to recognize the translations through which intention passes, to trace the biases embedded in mediators, and to understand the structural features that concentrate or disperse power. It is not a single skill but a family of capacities — historical, technical, critical — that together enable the builder to operate with an accurate understanding of what is actually producing her work. In the AI age, network literacy is the prerequisite for every other capacity. Prompting matters, but prompting without network literacy is driving without knowing the road exists.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept emerges from the recognition that the reassembled builder needs capacities that pre-AI education did not systematically cultivate. Technical skill in prompting or evaluation is necessary but not sufficient. What is needed is the structural understanding — the ability to ask: what is in the training data that