A Personal Journey

Obviously we are on a journey to Japan, and I’m delighted to have you with us. But I’m also on a personal journey, an inward journey as we travel to the orient. This post doesn’t deal specifically with any of the countries we’re visiting, so if you’re in a hurry, or just want to know about Japan, you may want to skip this long post. But if you love literature or writing, stick around. I’m having a small crisis in my life, and this trip provides me with the opportunity to conduct an important experiment. But first some background.

All of my life I have loved writing, first with pen on paper, later with typewriter, with “word processors” when they were new, and most recently with my iMac and laptop computers. I have focused on penmanship since I got my first “B” in the fourth grade. I have carried a fountain pen (not a ballpoint) and notebook on all of the twenty-seven international trips I have taken since my first trip to Mexico in 1967.

The act of physical writing has charmed my soul for more than 70 of my 75 years. My sister, who was three years older than I, came home each day when she was in the first grade and showed me the letters she had learned to write that day in school. I was writing sentences and sending letters to my grandma by the time I was four years old.

It should come as no surprise, then, that love fountain pens. I have a small collection. Its oldest member is the pen Glenda’s grandmother used when she learned to write in 1920. I still use these pens daily for my personal journal. One of my most treasured pens is a Montblanc I bought from a lovely Korean salesclerk at the Joon Pen Shop in the World Trade Center a few years before its destruction changed our world. Every one of my fountain pens has a story behind it. Writing with them is for me almost a sacred act.

The point I’m making is that the physical act of writing is important to me—possibly more important than it is to most people. I confess I’m a dinosaur. I admit it. I hang onto old fashions, customs and technology longer than most. I still even wear sport coats, suits, hats and neckties in appropriate situations. I flatter myself by thinking these habits are a mark of civility. It could be that I’m just weird.

I like writing, and even typing on a keyboard. The process slows me down so that I actually have time to think not only about what I write, but also about how I am saying it. I have written four novels, none of which is published because I have been unsuccessful in getting an agent who will take them. They may, in fact, be unworthy of publication. I suppose current market trends determine such issues, but I learned in writing these stories that the people we call “writers” are not actually writers. They are composers. They are celebrated not because they can write but because they can compose tales that have interest, tension, universality and characterization. That process that we call “writing “ is actually composition. And the two skills are vastly different. Writing per se is not done by an author; it is done by a scribe or a copyist. An author composes. I love both pursuits, but they are two completely different skills, though each is necessary for the other.

The world of literature and language, letters and writing, is changing. One of the airlines taking us to Japan has just reduced (again) the size and weight limits for carry-on luggage to ridiculously small dimensions. Consequently, I carry neither pen nor notebook to the land of the rising sun on this trip. I must have my iPhone anyhow, since it is required by airlines and governments for boarding passes and QR codes. My grand experiment is this. The only writing tool have with me is an iPhone. Because I hate typing long documents (like travel blogs) with my thumbs, my writing has now become dictation. The process feels less like composition than conversation. And I’m not used to it yet.

About the time I was ready to consign the whole new dictating process to Dante’s eighth level of hell, the app providers came out with “artificial intelligence.” I had heard about it for a while, but only started playing with it last month. At first I thought, “Okay, I’ll type with my thumbs or dictate and let the AI-bot proofread and clean up the text. Maybe writing without really writing could still be an option for me.” I have found, though, that not only for editing, but for composing itself, artificial intelligence is good.

Scary good.

Glenda just read a novel which she will discuss at her next book club meeting. There is a particular character in the book whom she finds unbelievable. She asked our AI agent to write a college-level essay discussing the unrealistic elements of this character’s depiction in the novel. That’s all. She offered no suggestions. She provided no text, just that general prompt.

In seven seconds our AI assistant produced a well-reasoned and well-written analysis. Were I her professor, I would give the student who wrote this essay an “A.”

I love to write these posts on FindPenguins as we travel. I have not simply said to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude-AI to “write a travel blog about Kyoto,” although it certainly could do so. And without question, its prose is better than mine. So far, for good or ill, everything I write here is still all my stuff. I can see, though, that artificial intelligence is a remarkable tool.

And I am tempted.

I’m amazed by it, and I welcome it even though I still have some misgivings. It makes me wonder whether much of my education is obsolete. I spent years developing good cursive penmanship, but when I got a typewriter, cursive became obsolete. Schools no longer teach cursive, and although there are a few parents who bemoan the loss, I do not. Cursive penmanship has been relegated to a small artistic niche of our culture. I accept that reality.

The same process took place when personal calculators came on the scene. The computational skills we spent years learning were no longer necessary. My high school physics teacher flunked any student bringing a calculator to class in 1966. Conversely, I audited an undergraduate course in astrophysics after I retired in 2012. The professor threatened to flunk any student who did not bring a calculator to class.

I am tempted to let the AI-bot write my blog, just as I was tempted to take a calculator to do my math for me in my high school physics class. Somehow, though, I still do not feel as though doing so would be quite legitimate or honest. I expect, however, that in a few years we will move to a situation like that of my astrophysics class where all calculations were done by machine. The teacher approved, indeed required, computations to be done by computer. In the near future all writing will be done by robot. Teachers will require it.

I suppose I could put my question in very simple terms: I spent years learning to write cursive, and now cursive is obsolete. I spent years learning how to compute, and now manual computation is obsolete. I spent years learning to touch type, and now with computerized dictation, typing is obsolete. I spent my life learning how to think. Will thinking become obsolete? Fifty years from now will people be doing anything other than writing code?

Now that we have these wonderful tools of artificial intelligence, we no longer need to study grammar or composition. It is hard to say whether these changes are good or bad for our culture. Perhaps if technology can do some of the drudge work, then we can spend more time with each other. And of course, if we still want to write with a fountain pen, play the piano or drive our own car (computers can do that now too), we are perfectly free to do so.

On the other hand, one might ask whether we will actually enjoy the extra time spent in each other’s company if we no longer think, create or reason but let technology do all of that for us.

I noticed on the airplane yesterday the woman sitting in front of me. She spent the five hours of the flight playing games over cell phone. The first couple of hours she played solitaire, and for the next few hours several games involving the completion of geometric figures or dice. We must be aware of the possibility that if we allow technology to do all of our thinking and creating, we may quickly become bored—and boring. Wouldn’t it be a disappointment to have more time to visit and talk with other people only to come to the vague awareness that there is no one home?

But Pandora’s box is opened, and there is no way to shut it.

So my experiment is underway. I will be writing without writing. I will be talking into a machine that will produce written text. But even this effort is unnecessary. I could simply tell AI to write my blog for me, and she would do it. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

But I’m interested to know what you think. Are there processes in your life that technology is forcing (or allowing) you to change? Is this progress a good thing? I welcome any comments you wish to share.Read more