In this personal essay, I share reflections on an upcoming trip to Mongolia and my work with the Jeweled Horse Foundation. As AI becomes more deeply embedded in our lives, I raise a question I fear is being overlooked: what happens to the kinds of knowledge that can’t be digitized? And what do we lose if we let that knowledge disappear? I hope it sparks reflection on how we, as a global society, value different kinds of knowledge.
Why I’m going back to Mongolia
This coming September, I’ll be joining a group of around 20 people, traveling to the Altai Mountains in western Mongolia. We’ll be staying with Kazakh nomads, joining them for an eagle-hunting festival and a multi-day horse trek. I’ll sleep in a ger (a traditional Mongolian yurt), at a campsite with a single portable toilet and one makeshift shower for the entire group.
For 13 nights, in this remote corner of the world, we’ll have no electricity, no running water, no cell phone service.
I couldn’t be more excited.
There are two reasons I keep getting pulled back to Mongolia. The first is personal: it’s a connection to the culture of some of my ancestors. The second is harder to articulate, but it’s something I feel more intensely with every passing year: the faster technological advances push Western society forward, the more I want to balance it by stepping back. Back into places where people live in harmony with the land, in ways that have remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.
Preserving Nomadic Culture
I recently attended the annual board meeting of the Jeweled Horse Foundation, where I serve as Board Secretary. One of our goals is to help preserve the nomadic way of life in Mongolia. Plenty of nonprofits serve Mongolians, but many are missionary organizations that seek to also spread Christianity. Our mission is different. We believe in supporting nomadic life without trying to convert or change the culture.
During that meeting, I found myself thinking about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. We’re living through an incredible moment where AI is making collective human knowledge widely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Anyone, anywhere, can learn almost anything. If you believe knowledge is power and that education is the greatest equalizer, this is an extraordinary time to be alive. It matters less and less where you’re born or how privileged you are. If you have the desire to learn, AI is making it easier and more accessible than ever before.
But I keep coming back to a nagging question: what about all the world’s knowledge we can’t digitize?
Traditional Knowledge That Can’t Be Digitized
Mongolian nomads live in close relationship with their animals, drawing sustenance from milk, meat, and hide. They make cheeses, yogurts, and fermented drinks. They produce wool, felt, and textiles. They use humane slaughter techniques and know how to utilize the whole animal, wasting nothing. Their entire way of life — from basic nutrition and survival to transportation and leisure — is built around the close relationship they’ve built with five traditional herding animals: goats, sheep, camels, horses, and yaks.
Their deep, specialized knowledge isn’t taught in schools or written down in college textbooks. It’s passed directly from father to son, mother to daughter, generation to generation.
I’m reminded of a passage from the introduction to a book of Mongolian folktales that talks about the tradition of oral storytelling and touches on this same idea:
“…assumed by people who call themselves ‘civilized’ […], that because most of the Mongols were illiterate, they were also ignorant, and because they were ignorant, they were also stupid. But being unable to read is not the same thing as being ignorant, and a man who is ignorant is not necessarily a stupid man. […] [the Mongols] had a wide range of knowledge, especially knowledge of nature, knowledge of human nature, and knowledge, most important of all, of the nature of society.” — Owen Lattimore
This kind of wisdom risks being erased, not by malice, but by omission. It’s invisible to our modern technology systems that are cataloging and organizing digital information. Nomadic wisdom can’t be scraped, digitized, or fed into a large language model (the kinds of AI systems behind tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity).
When it comes to this wisdom the nomads have, you have to live it to learn it.
What We Risk Losing
I’m generally optimistic about the future of AI. I believe it has the potential to bring abundance and expand access to knowledge in powerful ways. But I also worry about what gets left behind. Doesn’t it already feel like the world is becoming more homogenous? Have you noticed how similar certain major cities around the world start to feel, with the same global brands, stores, and restaurant chains?
As AI accelerates this flattening effect, it is even more urgent to preserve distinct cultures. With loss of cultural and tribal knowledge, we lose more than just a lifestyle — we lose insight into different ways of being human.
The people building our AI systems probably aren’t thinking about nomads in the Altai Mountains. I wouldn’t have either, if I hadn’t spent time with Mongolian nomads six years ago. That experience gave me a deep appreciation for a people whose culture is so different from my day-to-day life. I saw their incredible talents firsthand — especially their horsemanship, but also the way they milk animals and make dairy products from scratch, every day. I saw how hard they work, how beautifully untouched the land is, and how much of their life is built around care, skill, and connection to nature. It made me fall in love with a place and a people whose way of life deserves to be preserved.
My fear is that if we lose these ancient ways of life, we’ll also lose essential wisdom that even the most sophisticated AI could never replicate.
I look forward to sharing my experience visiting Mongolia this September and continuing to support the Jeweled Horse Foundation.
Before you go, here are a few questions to consider:
Can you think of other kinds of knowledge that can’t be digitized?
What happens if we lose them?
What ancient wisdom did your ancestors have, and how was it passed along?
Who decides which knowledge is worth preserving?
Can AI help protect culture, or does it risk erasing it?
What role can each of us play in keeping different ways of life alive?
Support The Jeweled Horse Foundation: https://jeweledhorse.org/donate
Looking for something good to read? Here's some great writing over the past week or so...
@austin-hurwitz argues that traditional intellectual property enforcement is crumbling in the face of AI and remix culture, and creators should embrace collaborative, data-driven ecosystems to build enduring value. "In a world where everything is derivative and everything is a remix, the winners won’t be those with the most aggressive legal teams." https://paragraph.com/@onebigidea/ip-is-dead
@bobhale critiques the growing absurdities of modern economic systems, arguing that the rise of installment-based consumption, big tech dominance, and eroding ownership reflect a shift from capitalism to a dystopian, digital form of techno-feudalism. "Maybe we should name it Capitalism+, as if it is a subscription service in itself." https://paragraph.com/@technocrap/klarna,-capitalism-and-feudalism
@epr argues that while AI won’t eliminate entry-level jobs, it will erode mid-level roles, forcing junior employees to take on greater responsibilities without adequate support or training. "AI doesn’t eliminate the need for training. It just raises the baseline for what ‘entry-level’ looks like, without updating the systems that help people get there." https://blog.epr.net/ai-wont-kill-entry-level-jobs
love these threads 🙏🏾
Aww, thank you! :) Please let us know any great writing we miss in these roundups.
Haha amazing thank you!
Testing something out, but also people should check out this post from @adrienne, highlighting how AI risks accelerating the flattening effect & making it hard for distinct cultures to survive. https://paragraph.com/@adrienne/what-ai-cant-learn-a-case-for-preserving-nomadic-culture
Whatchu testing? 👀 I spied some changes to the writers dashboard earlier
We're shipping a fairly big update today and wanted to make sure the new posts pages worked in the Paragraph miniapp on Farcaster, and appears they're working! :)
@adrienne would love to hear any feedback on the changes!
nice, good luck !
Other knowledge that can't be digitized - The local san gabriel mountain snowpack still isn't online really anywhere, even in niche backcountry ski groups - Gnosis - What a Venetian ship captain knows about how to navigate the lagoon - Metis, tacit knowledge etc
More specifically to the piece, the meditation on nomadic culture and knowledge reminded me of one of my all time favorite quotes “ *The more I read, the more convinced I became that nomads had been the crank handle of history, if for no other reason than that the great monotheism had, all of them, surfaced from the pastoral milieu....* “ Bruce Chatwin the Songlines
You know how AI keeps gobbling up all the worlds knowledge and making it accessible to anyone, anywhere with an internet connection? But what happens to knowledge we can’t digitize? This question has been nagging at me, so I wrote a blog about it. Would love to hear any thoughts or feedback. https://paragraph.xyz/@adrienne/what-ai-cant-learn-a-case-for-preserving-nomadic-culture
The danger is there, but it's also unavoidable. Knowledge always get lost. There are so many technologies, techniques, processes that we have lost throughout the ages. The other day I was listening to a podcast about "linothorax", an ancient technology used to create synthetic armor... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLBMupbqo2I Scientists and engineers are struggling to guess and rediscover how ancient monuments were built, because the technology and the science used is lost. We no longer know how to extract a lot of medicines used even a few centuries ago. We know that only a small fraction of ancient dramas have reached us. It has been happening forever. The question is if we are forgetting faster or slower. Not sure what the answer is.
So interesting. I’d like to think digitizing knowledge lets us retain more of it.
What I think we would need to preserve knowledge like this, is a great understanding (and maybe a standard) for how AIs are trained. Then we know how to feed this information in such a way that it is prioritised over misinformation. I think that's the greatest challenge of AI at the moment, that it's not very transparent how information is weighed. But that's a side-track. Secondly, what is very important, is that we tell these stories. Through blogs, photos, videos. By observing, by interviewing. I think Vrypan said in another comment that loss of knowledge is unavoidable and a reality of human history. But we, almost anybody around the world, have the tools in our pocket to preserve this knowledge. If at all possible, you could even start during your upcoming trip if you find a way to record some of it. Maybe get a solar charger for your phone so you can (with permission, of course) film some of it. But I actually assume that is already your plan.
Loss of knowledge is unavoidable. I accept this, while we can also try to limit the amount or rate of loss. And yes of course I will bring extra batteries and I will take pics and videos and write in my journal. ☺️
So all manual labor ? For now
Exploring Mongolia's nomadic culture highlights the richness of knowledge that can't be digitized. As @adrienne prepares for an exciting trip with the Jeweled Horse Foundation, there's a vital call to reflect on preserving unique wisdom amid advancing technology. What is the cost of losing these legacies?