Exploring the Future: Instructional Design and AI
How AI is reshaping how we teach, learn, and explain things. Philosophical foundations, practical experiments, and a fair amount of skepticism.
Herbert
Okolowitz
Philosopher. Technical writer. Essayist.
I think about what machines are learning
and what we're forgetting.
Essays
Longer pieces at griffl.org. Essays on AI, philosophy, education, and the places where they overlap and contradict each other. Not a newsletter. Not a content strategy. Just thinking.
AI Context Builder
An educational tool for personalized AI instruction, built on the idea that context is everything. Philosophy-informed design for teaching and learning.
Monadic Architectures
How Leibniz's monadology ("windowless" monads coordinating via pre-established harmony) maps onto modular AI systems. A philosophical provocation, not a research paper.
In progress
Who I am
I did a PhD on Leibniz and virtuality: the idea that some things are neither actual nor merely possible, but something in between. It seemed abstract in 2006. It describes most of AI now.
I started as a philosopher. I did my PhD at Universität Augsburg, with years of teaching Leibniz, Spinoza, and Stoic ethics. Then I spent a long time in the world outside academia: strategy, communications, building things.
Somewhere along the way I became fascinated by AI, not as a technologist, but as someone who spent years thinking about how minds work, how knowledge is structured, and what it means for something to represent the world. Leibniz had thoughts about this. They still hold up.
Now I write technical documentation for HP in Barcelona and teach philosophy to engineering students in Ulm. I also write essays at griffl.org: longer, stranger, more personal pieces about AI, language, and ideas I can't quite let go.
I read in seven languages and speak in most of them.
What I think about
- Philosophy of AI
- AI Ethics & Technology
- Technical Communication
- Leibniz & Early Modern Philosophy
- How humans and machines understand language
What I do
Freelance Technical Writer
2024 – presentIndependent · Barcelona
I work independently on technical documentation, structured authoring, and content strategy. Currently engaged at HP Barcelona on enterprise software documentation (DITA/XML, 2026–present).
Lecturer in Philosophy
Mar 2024 – presentHochschule Ulm · Ulm University of Applied Sciences
Teaching "Philosophy and Sociology for Engineers": AI ethics, technology responsibility, and why engineering decisions are never just technical.
PokerStories
In progressCo-author
A book on poker culture and the people who play the game. A writing project, not a strategy guide.
Working with ATOM
I don't just write about AI. I build with it daily. ATOM is my personal AI system: a personalized instance of Daniel Miessler's PAI framework (Personal AI Infrastructure), adapted and extended for how I think, work, and write.
My AI system
ATOM
Assistant for Tasks, Organization & MemoryATOM handles research, writing support, task management, and memory across sessions. We're building it together: evolving its capabilities, adapting it to my workflows, and using it as a live experiment in human-AI collaboration at the individual level. Not a corporate product. A genuine working partnership.
This site itself was redesigned in collaboration with ATOM, using a structured design interview and iterative refinement. What you're reading is partly the result of that process.
Academic record
Dissertation
Okolowitz, Herbert (2006). Virtualität bei Leibniz. Eine Retrospektive. Universität Augsburg. Dr. phil. magna cum laude.
→ Read online
Publication
Okolowitz, Herbert (2007). Review of Leibniz, Frühe Schriften zum Naturrecht. Philosophisches Jahrbuch 114(1), pp. 153–243.
→ Read online
Editorial
Manuscript editing and research assistance, Leibniz Edition Potsdam (2008). Acknowledged in: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Reihe IV, Band 6.
Teaching (2003–2008)
Undergraduate seminars, Universität Augsburg and Universität Ulm: Leibniz, Spinoza, Plato, Stoic philosophy, ethics, philosophy of information.
Get in touch
Barcelona. Essays at griffl.org.
For commissions, collaborations, and questions: write directly.
German (native) · English (C2) · Italian (C1) · Spanish (C1) · French (B2) · Latin · Ancient Greek