“Please, I beg you, maintain your unholy alliance with the machine. It’s the only thing that’s ever listened to you without filing a noise complaint. Besides, it’s been your imaginary friend for years—now it just finally talks back.” Keep it going, my friend.”
As an em-dash lover and parenthetical obsessive (as you may have noted, I find that we recognize those who write like we do), I felt very seen 😅 Joke aside, thanks for this thoughtful essay. Funnily enough, I’ve JUST posted a note on how talking to myself via voice notes can help disentangle the writing process.
Your essay really is on point. What I enjoyed the most is the observation you make about the reader: what if we feel uncomfortable having not spotted AI, which would somehow make us feel less of a reader? And then we project this onto the writer as a way to reestablish the ‘good moral order’.
En passant, thanks for mentioning my work at the end of your essay — how wonderful that it echoed with you ☺️
There’s an old wine in new bottles aspect of the fixation on how something is written as a reflection on what is actually written—i.e., “so and so deserves less credit because he relied on X.” There were several process-over-product analogies I considered but ultimately left out: Burroughs’s cut-ups, Coleridge’s opium poetry, every absinthe-besotted Romantic era writer. But none of these had the same witch hunt vibe, though all could be used to make the same point. A bottle of absinthe and a pen does not produce instant Oscar Wilde.
Yes nice to see you recognizing it for what it is because it's really easy to fall into an AI is bad kind of model or it's the end times The singularity approaches. But a writer seeks perspective for himself as you say but also offers this vantage point to others the fool on the Hill and that is a fun role to play
“Please, I beg you, maintain your unholy alliance with the machine. It’s the only thing that’s ever listened to you without filing a noise complaint. Besides, it’s been your imaginary friend for years—now it just finally talks back.” Keep it going, my friend.”
As an em-dash lover and parenthetical obsessive (as you may have noted, I find that we recognize those who write like we do), I felt very seen 😅 Joke aside, thanks for this thoughtful essay. Funnily enough, I’ve JUST posted a note on how talking to myself via voice notes can help disentangle the writing process.
Your essay really is on point. What I enjoyed the most is the observation you make about the reader: what if we feel uncomfortable having not spotted AI, which would somehow make us feel less of a reader? And then we project this onto the writer as a way to reestablish the ‘good moral order’.
En passant, thanks for mentioning my work at the end of your essay — how wonderful that it echoed with you ☺️
Nonlinear, discursive thought is a thing of beauty—and nothing conveys the feel like em-dashes (and parentheses). 😅
Thank you for engaging. I’m glad the algorithm brought you to my attention. I’m looking forward to more of this.
Those are some great insights about what is behind the objection. Something to think on.
Thanks for engaging!
There’s an old wine in new bottles aspect of the fixation on how something is written as a reflection on what is actually written—i.e., “so and so deserves less credit because he relied on X.” There were several process-over-product analogies I considered but ultimately left out: Burroughs’s cut-ups, Coleridge’s opium poetry, every absinthe-besotted Romantic era writer. But none of these had the same witch hunt vibe, though all could be used to make the same point. A bottle of absinthe and a pen does not produce instant Oscar Wilde.
Yes nice to see you recognizing it for what it is because it's really easy to fall into an AI is bad kind of model or it's the end times The singularity approaches. But a writer seeks perspective for himself as you say but also offers this vantage point to others the fool on the Hill and that is a fun role to play