Writer

I'm a writer. I write. That's what I'm doing right now. Writing changes and evolves, as do people. I can't remember the last time I saw something I wrote on paper. I have some vague, nebulous kinda-sorta understanding that some of the thoughts that form in my brain are directed down my arms to my fingers and, mixed with vision and co-ordination the fingers touch the right keys which cause electrical contacts to send digital versions of alphanumeric characters to a processor which decodes the information and displays it on a screen I can see. I know it's an applied scientific process which some people fully understand and are capable of creating...otherwise I could do what I'm doing. But it's almost close enough to magic to make it seem so.

Thomas Jefferson was a smart guy and he wrote a lot of things. But every bit of his writing was done (I think) with the end of bird's feather repeatedly dipped into a small container of ink, then applied to paper. The only way he could get others to see his writing was to take or send that paper to someone. I think our biggest improvement so far is that we don't have to carry our screen around to show to people we want to see our words. There are billions of screens now and we can, almost magically, send our words to huge numbers of them. I sure wouldn't write very much if Mr. Jefferson's feather, ink and paper were the only way I had to do it, in part, simply because the process is hugely time consuming and laborious, compared to this. Sometimes I wonder what's next. When a time comes in which writers look back at this period and say, "all that messing about with tapping physical "keys" and things called "mice"...shudder, how did anyone ever get anything written?" Will there still be such things as "writers" then and how will they do it?

There are some "voice recognition" programs now which can instantly convert your spoken words into visual text on a screen. I don't see that as much of an improvement. Judging by how much "texting" people do with phones, as opposed to talking, many agree. Of course, there is another thing about most writers...they wish to involve others. How many writers would write anything at all if they were reasonably certain that not a single human other than themselves would ever see and read the words? I think of writer as social...but it's a kind of what I call a "projected" sociability. They intend their words for some future audience. Writers write for a myriad of reasons but I view most as the passive aggressive intruder sort. The aggression is wanting to intrude their thoughts into your head. It only works if you agree and allow it (that's the passive part)...so far. :)

But there surely has to be an easier and faster way. Some draw analogies between individual cells making up your body and individual persons making up humanity. Maybe this is still only in the crude and primitive stage. Suppose humanity eventually becomes a "creature". A global mind composed of billions and billions of single brains, supplemented with still more billions or trillions of "artifical" devices. Could we learn to adapt to such an environment? Would we still be "humans"? Would it be good or bad if we were not?

I've written hundreds, maybe thousands of books. Not a single one has ever appeared on screens or on paper. All of them have appeared in my "mind's eye", fleetingly and never fully formed...I think of them as miscarriages. The best and most extensive have contained a few paragraphs or pages that might possibly be discernable to another mind - if the technology existed yet to do that. All these books, Julia Loui-Dreyfus finishes for me with "yada, yada, yada". I understand them without the tedium of having to form complete thoughts and words and sequences of events, etc., but no one else would.

This kind of communicating with other brains is exhausting. Even when you supposedly speak and understand the same language, a great deal can be lost (and inserted) in "interpretation". If a whole different language is involved, well, hang it up. I might say I'd like some jussipussi with my supper and folk could get the wrong idea. See?

TRB