Readin Ritin and Rithmetic
I’m reading a book this week. Yes, a real one, not an audiobook, not an E-book, but a Gutenberg ink-on-the-papyrus novel that’s 500 plus pages. I can guess what you’re thinking: I’m missing 500 cat videos, nature flicks, influencer suggestions and who knows what else on Tik-Tok, X or Instagram. I got friends now who can’t wade through a two paragraph e-mail, not after Twitter convinced them less is more. Or at least enough.
Without ratcheting into an essay on loss of concentration, short attention spans, ADHD and the evils of social media, I just wonder how libraries still survive. Or bookstores. Or the U.S. Post Office. When was the last letter you got? How about the last letter you ever wrote — and no, that Christmas card with your signature on the bottom does NOT count. Forget about claiming your name has six letters in it, don’t gaslight me!
Sure, by year’s end AI will write whatever you want for you. Even write a 500 page novel. A poem. A short story. An essay. Lyrics to a song — and the music too.
The Tech Boyz will tell you this is the Brave New Future, faster, better, way more intelligent. Oh, I know, at first we’ll tell ourselves the Bots are merely an adjunct to human creativity, an appendage, not crutch. And anyway, you can probably tell the difference, poorer quality, so you think. But have no doubt, the machines will go beyond mere mimickery, they’ll learn our tricks and they they’ll become, for want of a technical term, creative. What, you think humans are that special?
So okay, maybe I read books to escape the world I see passing me on the shoulder of the digital highway. When I find out the author isn’t human, just a box of algorithms, those cat videos may look damn tempting. Course by then the Bots will probably be making those too.
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Tags: AI Creativity, Gutenberg in his Grave, Real books