Writes and Write-Nots -->

October 2024

I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I<br>feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there<br>won't be many people who can write.

One of the strangest things you learn if you're a writer is how<br>many people have trouble writing. Doctors know how many people have<br>a mole they're worried about; people who are good at setting up<br>computers know how many people aren't; writers know how many people<br>need help writing.

The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's<br>fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly,<br>and thinking clearly is hard.

And yet writing pervades many jobs, and the more prestigious the<br>job, the more writing it tends to require.

These two powerful opposing forces, the pervasive expectation of<br>writing and the irreducible difficulty of doing it, create enormous<br>pressure. This is why eminent professors often turn out to have<br>resorted to plagiarism. The most striking thing to me about these<br>cases is the pettiness of the thefts. The stuff they steal is usually<br>the most mundane boilerplate — the sort of thing that anyone who<br>was even halfway decent at writing could turn out with no effort<br>at all. Which means they're not even halfway decent at writing.

Till recently there was no convenient escape valve for the pressure<br>created by these opposing forces. You could pay someone to write<br>for you, like JFK, or plagiarize, like MLK, but if you couldn't buy<br>or steal words, you had to write them yourself. And as a result<br>nearly everyone who was expected to write had to learn how.

Not anymore. AI has blown this world open. Almost all pressure to<br>write has dissipated. You can have AI do it for you, both in school<br>and at work.

The result will be a world divided into writes and write-nots.<br>There will still be some people who can write. Some of us like it.<br>But the middle ground between those who are good at writing and<br>those who can't write at all will disappear. Instead of good writers,<br>ok writers, and people who can't write, there will just be good<br>writers and people who can't write.

Is that so bad? Isn't it common for skills to disappear when<br>technology makes them obsolete? There aren't many blacksmiths left,<br>and it doesn't seem to be a problem.

Yes, it's bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing<br>is thinking. In fact there's a kind of thinking that can only be<br>done by writing. You can't make this point better than Leslie Lamport<br>did:

If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.

So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous<br>than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know<br>which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.

This situation is not unprecedented. In preindustrial times most<br>people's jobs made them strong. Now if you want to be strong, you<br>work out. So there are still strong people, but only those who<br>choose to be.

It will be the same with writing. There will still be smart people,<br>but only those who choose to be.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Ben Miller,<br>and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.