Talking Techno(logy) with Michael Kicey

by KAITLYN LIU

In about the same time it takes you to sit down, open this tab, and read through this article, you could also listen to the 6:28-minute song “WHRRu” by Nadia Struiwigh – one of Mike Kicey’s favorite electronic songs. 

After meeting with Kicey in their office on Feb. 4, I received an email with 11 song recommendations. Struiwigh’s “WHRRu,” which is also the name of the album, caught my attention for a few reasons. The song itself is meditative, soothing. Reviews describe her downtempo as “a journey full of synthesized soundscapes that flirt with ambient techno.” I let the song play quietly in the background as I composed this feature, letting Kicey’s music taste guide my perusal through the transcription of our hour-long discussion. Perhaps the most catching part of Kicey’s song recommendation, apart from its sound itself, is Struiwigh’s cover art.

Should readers take a closer look, the artwork depicts a strange blend of urbanism, domesticity, otherworldliness and oceanity. It is this image and this song that lead me into the start of an expansive conversation with Kicey on librarianship, research and artificial intelligence. Let us start with a question inspired by Struiwigh’s song and album title: Where are we?

In Kicey’s words, it is a really weird time to be in the library. Having just finished serving two years as the chair of the AI Advisory Group, they are uninterested in the gloom-and-doom narratives of technology ruining education. One of the first things Kicey reminds me of is that their interest in humanity and research long predates the emergence of large language models like ChatGPT. If anyone were to look at Kicey’s work, they would see a long-documented interest in the questions of inquiry and digital humanities within libraries. As a librarian in the humanities, Kicey prizes the embodiment behind research and digital inquiry. For them, the most promising aspect of AI lies in our ability to reframe what teachers have long been aiming to communicate to students: that research is a conversation. 

Although researchers using AI are conversing with an interface, Kicey nevertheless encourages AI users to “tell it who you are and what you expect… have a conversation and nudge it and move it in different directions.” This experience works against the expectation of immediate satisfaction in one’s research to center the researcher’s positionality – or, in Struiwigh’s words, “where you are” in relation to your research. Still, Kicey remains attentive to the difficulty posed by the digital divide and the range of unethical issues presented by AI usage. As a teacher, they also emphasize the capacity for humanity by emphasizing cultural context and historical significance in research – something they once chose to do by inviting their Ancient Greek students to play through the discovery mode of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey in UB’s Level Up gaming lounge. Ultimately, it is no surprise that for researchers like Kicey, the rewarding part of research lies in the iterative nature of inquiry itself. 

This same passion for consistent, innovative work is evident in Kicey’s research. At UB, Kicey has over a dozen research guides covering a range of topics from mathematics to Marcel Proust to Buddhism. When I ask how they have managed such a feat, they laugh and say, “I was a little bit younger when I did this, [but] you have to be hungry.” This hunger stems from Kicey’s own path to librarianship, which only came about six years after graduating with a Ph.D. in comparative literature. While this career move was motivated by a series of practical decisions, Kicey was also attracted to the intellectual freedom they found in their new position. As opposed to the narrow field of research that academia often imposes, librarianship offered Kicey the time and space to explore a range of interests. It is this freedom to do the patient, rigorous (and, they say, sometimes boring) work of librarianship that Kicey claims led to the research guides we see published today.

In the last minute of “WHRRu,” listeners hear a swell of instruments and human vocalization that eventually descends into near-silence. In the context of this interview, I read this part of the song as a transition from the confounding, unfamiliar digital world to the comfort that accompanies solitude or self reflection. For that reason, I end the interview by asking Kicey how they spend their time. Outside of work, you can find them reading Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons aloud, and conversing with AI on matters of pedagogy, pleasure or queerness in the text.1 As of today, they are also preparing for several upcoming lectures on Buddhism, AI and philosophy. When I ask where they find joy, they cite their practice; Kicey meets with a Zen group every Tuesday night in their position as the primary chant leader. To learn more about Kicey and their research, you can find a list of their publications and links to their many research guides. Thank you, Mike, for letting us know “WHR” you are.