Someone on substack recently asked the question “Will there ever be a medium to replace books?”
I believe the answer is no. I cited that the rules to the Royal Game of Ur were translated from handwritten cuneiform tablets which were 4000 years old. In 4000 years, what will survive? Important works which have been preserved, handwritten notes which have been found–most digital tech will likely be inert boxes of plastic, or digital formats will have transcended their current domain.
It occurred to me, as I was contemplating this, that there is a difference between digital text and writing. Writing is a physical thing. If I mark a page with a pen, I cannot unmark it. Digital typing is not writing. It is word processing. It is better thought of as coding. In writing this article, I am coding data to display vector graphic icons which share the same shape as the Roman alphabet we all know and love. Arranging these icons in a discernable pattern can be read, but it is a distinct activity on a distinct medium. Digital word processing is to writing as Etch-a-sketch is to painting–it is impermanent and fleeting. This article will not be around in 4,000 years, but someone might find my 4th grade art project in a fossilized dump somewhere. Someone may find the rules to the ice bucket challenge in 4000 years and translate them and give that challenge new life. No one will ever see the videos posted to youtube.
I’ve always been aware of this impermanence of the digital, and it always makes me feel a little bit uneasy. The materialist side of me wants my writings to be preserved. But maybe it’s better that they be lost to time, so that I can rest humbly in peaceful anonymity.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 
I’ve recently been messing about with the OpenAI ChatGPT and it is fascinating. I haven’t used a ChatBot specifically for a decade probably and only a bit with so-called “digital assistants,” which I find rather unimpressive.
To your point, this ChatGPT is merely a very fancy word processor, but it’s ability to seem coherent at first glance is very high, the same with DALL-E, the art AI. Many have pointed out that might be more a reflection on the general and increasing incoherence and superficiality of human-made culture.
But to your second point, it is interesting to think that the sets these so-called AIs are trained on will probably became so large that chances are good it will include some of your or my online digital content. And it’s “descendants” could live on centuries, perhaps.
So, all digital content will someday be only a statistic, a very small change in the probability of one word following another. Not a bad metaphor for voting.
How much obviously more important then are the close things, family, prayer, and the Sacraments!
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David,
This is a really interesting comment, thank you. I think human culture has definitely declined in many respects but it is also true that computers have improved as well. Not necessarily in capability—we knew all these possibilities in the 80’s and were limited by processing power. AI is able to sound convincing because the datasets are so vast and the processing power so immense. But at the end of the day, all it does is simulate humanity.
The simultaneous fascination with AI and disdain for real living human children is fascinating to me. Humans are much more intricate and complex, what are people trying to do with AI?
I feel like so much of science these days is trying to post-hoc rationalize life choices and behaviors and world views.
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Thanks, Scoot, that is a really good point about how this reflects on human interpersonal relationships. Maybe human relationships have become too hard for many, as they’re ever more fraught with drama, politicization, therapization, or I think more likely, it’s just that technology mediated relations are by their nature “smoother” than any messy, authoritative, physically-embodied human relations. It’s the junk food of interpersonal relationships, or rather for AI it might be the Beyond Meat, an economical, “ethical” alternative to the real thing for those worn out by post-modernity.
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David,
My wife calls “antidepressants” contracepting your brain, and that phrasing really stuck out to me. Youve added substantially to the idea, so I will have to expand on this thought. Thank you for this!
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