Why Do We Write? AI and the Past, Present, and Future of Writing
It's been said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. We are seeing some of those rhymes now, as AI disrupts the world of human creativity. Will AI replace humans as the source of books, movies, and music? Maybe. It's hard to say what the future holds, but we are nonetheless forced to contend with the changes that are already seeping into our lives. As an educator, I am particularly interested in writing as it holds such a prominent role in academia. In this article, I look at writing from the perspective of past, present, and future.
The Past
It may be tempting to think of writing as an established fact of life—it's always been there and will always be there. But writing hasn't always been there. If humans are around 300,000 years old as a species, the earliest writing system appears only around 5,000 years ago. In other words, humans have only had writing for less than 2% of our time on this planet. This is a humbling thought, reminding us that writing itself is a relatively new development in human history, and has been constantly evolving and changing, and we have been changing with it. Arguably, writing is one of the most important developments in human history as it enabled record keeping, which in turn enabled concepts like trade and ownership to take prominent roles in human history. Indeed, even the concept of History itself arises as a result of writing.
The earliest innovations in writing came from using materials readily available in our environment—marking with charcoal or pigments, carving into shells, and later inscribing into clay tablets. It's easy to look at these developments as occurring naturally and inevitably, but it's much harder to appreciate the life-changing impact that these seemingly-simple developments had. Just being able to mark a recognizable symbol on something could indicate permanent ownership—a concept that might not even be possible without writing. Record keeping would allow the development of accounting, trade, and the formalization of debt and credit. Some of our earliest records of writing were about trade, legal codes, state and religious decrees, taxes—all things that, if not brought into existence entirely by writing, surely reached massive levels of significance because of writing.
Let's jump ahead to the invention of the book. Tablets, scrolls, and manuscripts were all important leaps in writing technology for different cultures around the world, and all writing technology played an important role in establishing empires and cultural hegemony—something that continues to hold true to this day. History is written by the victors.
Codices (the predecessor to the modern book) were painstakingly made by hand - not only was the writing done manually, but the medium itself had to be specially made, page by page, or sometimes line by line. Codices were more works of art than practical reading material. Pages of books could take weeks or months to prepare, materials were rare and expensive, and the entire book was made and coordinated by artisans. Consequently, codices in the middle ages were prohibitively expensive for the average person. A codex might cost the better part of a year's salary for a worker in 14th century Europe, which might be equivalent to books costing tens of thousands of dollars in today's money.
A natural question to ask here is "How did anyone manage to read if books were so rare and expensive?" The answer is, they didn't.
For most of history, very few people could read or write. Most of the human beings that ever existed on this planet did so without reading or writing a word. It can be easy to take modern literacy for granted, but by doing so we miss out on the absolute revolutions that these developments caused. Of course, one of the most famous writing inventions is the Gutenberg printing press, which kicked off the printing revolution of the mid 15th century. It's difficult to appreciate just how impactful this development was, but suffice to say it had massive religious, cultural, and educational impacts. I'm not the first person to notice the parallels between AI and the printing press.
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Every development in writing has had drastic impacts on human civilization. They created new jobs, new systems, and even new ways of thinking and living. They also made many jobs obsolete and caused revolutions and wars. Again, it can be hard to appreciate just how groundbreaking each of these points in history were, and all too easy to take modern writing for granted. I find it comforting to know that AI, and all our attendant hopes and fears, are nothing new - this has all happened before, and will happen again.
The Present
Depending on your age, you have already lived through many technological revolutions in writing. The typewriter was an important development in writing where we moved away from script towards machine-augmented writing.
"The final decade of the 19th century saw a huge boom in the demand for typewriters. Organisations began to realise their value in streamlining and modernising office work."—National Museums Scotland
Typewriters were followed shortly by the word processor and the internet. By the turn of the century, handwriting had already been displaced by writing technology. Here's where I'll get contentious: handwriting is not as important as typing. I can recall writing by hand a few times this last year: once at a dentist's office (where I remember thinking how quaint it was that they still didn't have a digital system in 2024), once for my wife's birthday card, and perhaps a few times to scribble a note because I didn't want to start a new note on my phone. Handwriting is a hallmark of traditional education, but I believe it's also a holdover from the 20th century. I still hear mentioned from time to time that cursive is a valuable skill to learn as it creates unique connections in the brain. While I've had trouble pinning down studies on how true this is, or more importantly, how valuable any benefits are, I don't doubt it. But I'm also sure horseback riding, sailing, and hunting also create unique connections in the brain and would be good skills to learn, but do they deserve a foremost place in every school's curriculum? Human history is a constant rise and fall of skills, where old ways of doing things become obsolete and new ways of doing things must be learned in order to compete. The children we teach now must learn to type in order to participate in modern society. They may need to write by hand occasionally. I predict that by the 22nd century, handwriting will be more like sailing or horse riding today - a hobby. Perhaps writing itself will be relegated to hobby status, rather than a staple of modern life.
The future
Why do we write?
AI will (and already does) play a key role in the first three, and will ultimately come to dominate them I believe. AI excels at prosaic writing, like emails and reports and it's getting better. Much of our record-keeping is already automated, and as AI gets better, human involvement (and error) will continue to wane. AI is already a great tool for organizing and expanding on our thinking. If you haven't tried one yet, AI assistants are incredible for taking notes and keeping track of your thoughts.
Most people don't write much and by consequence aren't good writers and won't be able to compete with AI. So much time is devoted to writing in school (I remember writing so many five-paragraph essays, something I have never and probably will never need in my entire life) and I believe we need to reassess whether that's still a priority. In a world where most communication can be done with a quick prompt or the press of a button, do we need to be teaching students to write essays, the exact thing that AI excels at? It seems to me like teaching students to sew right after the sewing machine was invented. Yes, it may be a useful skill to learn, but it won't prepare them for the new economy that's developing.
Which leaves number four. Expressive writing will always be important to humans and cannot ever be replaced by AI. AI can never write your diary. AI can't write your poem that expresses how you feel. Can AI write best-seller novels or award-winning poetry? That will be interesting to see.
This is my call to my fellow educators: consider the ever-changing role and value of writing. It's not the same now as it was in 1985 and it certainly won't be the same in 2045. Our job is to prepare students for the future, and to do that, it helps to understand the past.
We, humans, have a rich history to adapting to the massively transformative power of technology, and now is no different. AI is the latest in the long march of technological progress. It will change how we live, learn and work, probably drastically. But this is nothing new. We have been through this many times before and we've always come off better, as a species, in the end.
Note: I did not use any AI in the writing of this piece. I had a specific idea of what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I also drew on a variety of sources and I vetted each one carefully to make sure it was valid and that I was using it correctly. I also wanted to infuse my own voice into this article. I didn't intend to eschew AI here (I often use AI in my writing), but it just so happened that this piece itself came out as a great example of a piece of writing that doesn't need AI.