Still a Human Upstream
Why I write my own damn words
I’ve written over 50k words this year.
More than ever.
By far.
It’s been strange to rediscover writing as it’s going the way of the buffalo.
In the face of AI I’ve felt like John Henry racing the steam driller.
Driven to exhaustion pounding his hammer into the mountain.
Barely able to keep up despite tremendous effort.
I feel differently now.
For two reasons.
Firstly, writing helps keep my mind sharp, alive, agile.
The difficulty creates the benefit.
It’s like working out, you need weight, pressure, force, that’s what causes the growth.
A computer can’t work out for me any more than it can write for me.
The cognitive offloading of AI, is something I’m wary as hell of.
Now is not a time for my brain to rot.
I want my wits about me as everything’s accelerating and changing.
Secondly, AI can’t hold a candle to real prose.
Maybe one day. Maybe. Not yet.
So much of what it produces is flat, sterile, devoid of heart and meaning.
Often mere gibberish masquerading as coherence.
If you want the good stuff, it still comes from humans, at least for now.
This is my pledge to you and to me…
I write my own words.
I use AI for editing, commas, misspellings.
Sometimes I like talking over structure with the bots.
Every now and then they suggest a zinger that I incorporate.
I like to ask them for feedback, which I liberally ignore.
That’s it.
Still slogging coffee and green tea to keep the engine humming.
Still wrestling with sentences until they relent.
Still grinding my keyboard down.
Still thinking and rethinking until things click.
Still pulling words from the great beyond down to the page the old fashioned way.
Still a human upstream of the words you’re reading.
