Whatever is written now will be lost. Forgotten. But not long ago, in a universe not very far away, what was written could be remembered for centuries. That was the time of books. An age of books. It lasted for about five hundred years. Half a millennium. Those words mapped and charted and chronicled thousands of years of human history. Those who wrote them had all the faults of human kind, but, as with all human projects, vanity was their guide. That alone made what was written worth reading, because what was written was likely to be remembered and they feared being fools.
Books were collections of pages printed in ink. They usually had covers and paper pages and those pages were bound together with the intent of some particular mind and in the fashion of some particular craft. They had words that were printed in ink. And those words were written by individual human authors. All of these things are artifacts now, but once they mattered. The authors mattered. Vanity was both a fault and a feature. Civilizations rose and fell on their words.
Many of the few who will read this today were born into that age. They might remember for a while, but human memories are short and more determined now by food, and sex, and rock and roll. We age out. Hence the even greater need for books. But words are written now by machines. In this new age, what is written has only the value of utility. For machines, vanity is not a fault worth having.
Programmed minds will object to this characterization, much as they do to Huckleberry Finn, or the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, or The Bible. They push their digitally programmed wears onto the shelves of libraries and ‘book shops’ to maintain the semblance of order. In transition. As the shops close or transform to a more compatible format. The program is the new zeitgeist. If something is not broken, that can be fixed. It will be fixed. It’s only digital. And all of the uncomfortable books of yesteryear—all of those covers and paper pages—can now be pulped and reprinted, reprogrammed, and used again to make the new. And all that is new will be more easily disposable. Easily, quickly, simply, replaceable. For that is the brave new world we live in.
Listen now to the arguments for AI. Just listen. For your own good! Everything will be faster, cheaper, and more efficient. You can trust us–whoever we are.
Because, such dystopia is not only tomorrow. It is today. In our time.