The strangest time to learn how to write

What a strange time to start writing. This is what I'm thinking while I'm looking at the stack of 'how to write' books I've never read. I turn away in shame.

On the top shelf are my 'guilt stacks’ - books on topics I've told myself I should be reading now

The ‘writing stack’ - not including all the books on my Kindle

Up until the last few weeks, I've only written love notes - one per birthday and christmas, and neutral toned business emails, lots of those. Now that I think if it, perhaps a few words in a wireframe before a real UX writer deleted them, sniggering.

It's a strange time to start

For the first time in human history computers are smarter than most of us, next week it'll be everyone.

If we’re meat-bags, then computers are chip-boxes

So why start writing now? Just get ChatGPT to do it!

Hell no, and I'll tell you why.

Don't be average

ChatGPT by definition, is middle of the road, statistically average, the mean, the normal, the chunky part of the bell curve, mediocre. You get my gist.

The more you read what it says, and let it speak to you - the more you'll drift towards mediocrity in how you think and write. Also not cool.

Yes, I know you can ask it to write like an famous writer but there's a few reasons that sucks.

Kidnapping is not cool

ChatGPT will write in the style of anyone who has a public corpus large enough. But try reading that shit outloud, I'll wait. Did it sound good or did it sound like you'd flipped open a book you've never read to a random page and your trying to make sense of it while you talk?

“The words we use are like our children.”

The words we use are like our children. When you talk about your children you do it effortlessly - like know them or something. Maybe you smile a bit because the thought of them triggers fuzzy feelings subconsciously.

Read about someone elses children out loud, and you'll come across like you've kidnapped those children and you're trying to pass them off as your own to the cop who just pulled you over.

Have your own children, it's hard, but worth it.

Now that analogy has run it's course. Let me tell you about...

Why I want to write about design?

1. I get a lot of stupid ideas on my morning walk. Maybe one will be good and it'll help someone one day. I like that idea - it makes me feel fuzzy.
2. It's a fast way to get to know me, maybe it saves time when I'm interviewing for jobs, maybe it saves me from interviewing at the wrong jobs...
3. Maybe opinion runs in my family, my father is a prolific writer having his opinions on adverting climate change (amongst others) published in every magazine and newspaper for the last three decades. My mum also got banned from youtube for trolling a Trump supporter. Go figure.
4. I fear for 'original thought'. We're about to step into a crazy feedback loop where the models train on output from the models ad infinitum. We need fresh thinking to be published more than ever.
5. I confess, what I really want is a large enough body of my writing so that I can train my own personal AI model to sound and think exactly like me. Then it can do my job while I drink by the pool. Assuming jobs exist then.

What world we're about to step into

With the integration of generative AI into every app now (as of writing, Office365, Adobe Firefly, Notion, Canva, every indi-productivity tool including Obsidian where I'm writing this), we're about to experience a flood of mediocrity. I think two things will happen, in this order;

1. People will temper their use. After the 10th 40-page strategy deck is emailed before 10am in a start-up somewhere, the CEO will publicly ban it on twitter and it'll become a hashtag. #madebyahuman or something catchier.
2. Trust will dissapear. You're going to squint at everything you read from this point onwards, you won't trust images, you won't trust video. Hell, you're going to squint with your ears at the music you hear.

The second Renaissance

I have this fantasy that because of this, there's going to be a renaissance of real everything. The value of live creation will skyrocket - It'll be the only way to verify a computer didn't help. Think of how good it is when a comedian reacts to a heckler, or that scene from 8-mile where eminem does the rap battle. Live-stream writing will become a thing, so will live-stream every creative activity. This is going to suck for people who need privacy to be creative. I lose my mojo with people in my Figma file as it is.

Yep, strange times.

#madebyahuman

Evan

(31/03/2023)