In my June 2026 essay, “But I want to know about after the press conference, when everyone has gone home,” I quoted from Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical Magnifica humanitas, which emphasizes that everyone has a role in building a society grounded on truth and mercy in the time of artificial intelligence. As Pope Leo wrote:

The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization. [emphasis added]1

I think that an important way that ordinary people can build the “civilization of love” is by participating in public culture. By “public culture,” I mean cultural institutions that exist to promote the common good, instead of serving commercial interests. Public culture consists of art made by humans, shared freely for the benefit of other humans. Public culture stands in contrast to the closed commercial culture (if you can call it a “culture”) of media monopolies, digital rights management, and generative AI, which seeks to extract maximum monetary value from human artists and their patrons.

I’ve spent almost six years volunteering for Standard Ebooks, a site that produces free and open-source ebooks “for the true book lover,” and through that experience I’ve learned a lot about different aspects of the public culture ecosystem. In this post, I will offer six suggestions about how you can participate in public culture, and ensure that people have access to meaningful human art and literature in the face of AI slop.

1. Support your local library

Public libraries are some of the most foundational public culture institutions, yet libraries in the United States have been threatened by federal funding cuts within the past year. Consider volunteering at your local library, or joining the “friends” group of your local library to support your library’s activities with a financial contribution.

2. Proofread public domain ebooks

After copyright protections on a book expire, the book enters the public domain. This means that these books can be legally shared and modified going into the future. Sites like Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, and Faded Page transcribe public domain books after they have been scanned and publish them freely in ebook form. All of these sites allow you to participate in the production process by becoming a proofreader:

• Distributed Proofreaders allows you to proofread for Project Gutenberg, one page at a time.

• Distributed Proofreaders Canada is a sister project for those based in Canada. It supports Faded Page.

• Wikisource is a sister project to Wikipedia. If you have ever edited Wikipedia before, you will find it similar. Check out the beginner's guide to Wikisource.

• Standard Ebooks doesn’t transcribe books like these other sites do, but you can read books from the collection and report errors you find to its mailing list.

3. Digitize historical documents with the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers

The Smithsonian Digital Volunteers help make American historical documents more accessible by transcribing them. The process is similar to the ebook projects listed above, but is a little more involved because some of the documents are handwritten. If you’re interested in history and you’re good at reading cursive, this may be for you!

4. Record an ebook for LibriVox

What Project Gutenberg is for ebooks, LibriVox is for audiobooks. They produce audiobook editions of books that have gone out of copyright. You can volunteer by contributing portions of a longer text, record an entire book by yourself, or even “act” by recording parts for a dramatic work. Former theater kids might enjoy this one!

5. Catalog public domain art for Standard Ebooks

Standard Ebooks curates a database of paintings that are in the U.S. public domain. Volunteers do research to verify that these images are free of copyright, and then upload photographic reproductions to the database. Standard Ebooks uses the database as a source of cover art for ebooks, but because these paintings are in public domain, they can legally be used by anyone for anything in the United States. The "Get Involved" page explains how you can begin cataloging paintings from art books.

6. Produce an ebook with Standard Ebooks (for the technically inclined)

If you have some basic coding experience, know how to use command-line tools, and have experience with version control software (namely git), you can produce an ebook from end to end for Standard Ebooks. As someone who has contributed over fifty ebooks to Standard Ebooks at this point, I can testify that this is an exciting (albeit very involved) way to use your technical skills in the service of public culture:

6. Donate funds to public culture institutions

While I tried to emphasize how people can participate in public culture (i.e. in non-financial ways), it’s also true that these institutions depend on funding to provide their public services. Please consider making a donation to one of these institutions:

• Your local library (through its “friends” group or foundation)

• The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

• The Public Domain Review (which publishes free essays about historical culture and curates a collection of interesting public domain media)

• Standard Ebooks (through Fractured Atlas, a 501(c)(3) public charity)

This list is not complete

There are probably countless ways that people like you can participate in public culture, and, as knowledgeable as I think I am on this subject, this list is not complete. If you can think of other possibilities, please leave a comment, and I will consider adding your idea to this list (with credit given where credit is due, of course)!

You can avoid these AI overviews by creating a custom search engine in your browser. A custom search engine can disable or circumvent the Google AI overview.

Step 1: Open your browser search settings

Firefox

Copy and paste “about:preferences#search” into the browser bar.

Chrome

Copy and paste “chrome://settings/searchEngines” into the browser bar.

Step 2: Create a custom search engine

Firefox

Hit the “Add” button. It will bring up a menu that looks like this:

You can call the search engine whatever you want. I use “Google (No AI).”

For the URL you have two options:

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&client=firefox-b-d&udm=14
   
   This will make your search default to the “Web” option on Google. You will only see webpage results (this also avoids things like the shopping overview). You can see the usual search results by switching to the “All” tab in your search results:

   

   

2. https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+-ai&client=firefox-b-d
   
   This appends the “-ai” option to your search, which disables the AI overview. You will still see things like the shopping overview. If you really wanted to see the AI overview for s, you just need to remove the “-ai” options from your search.

Chrome

Hit the “Add” button. It will bring up a menu that looks like this:

The name and shortcut are not important; they can be whatever you want.

As with Firefox, you have two options for the URL:

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&udm=14&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:language}{google:prefetchSource}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

This option will make your search default to the “Web” option on Google. You will only see webpage results (this also avoids things like the shopping overview).

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s+-ai&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:language}{google:prefetchSource}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

This option appends the “-ai” option to your search, which disables the AI overview.

Step 3: Set the new “no AI” search engine as default

Firefox

Set the default search engine using the drop-down menu at the top of the page.

Chrome

Click on the three dots (the “hamburger button”) to bring up this menu:

Step 4: Enjoy your AI overview-free searches!

Also, if you want some ideas about how you can push back against AI slop by participating in public culture, check out the post linked below!