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Is writing now changing the world for the worse?

Humanity’s great civilising accomplishment may have slipped the leash. Computer programs and surveillance also involve ‘writing’, potentially making us decreasingly human

3 February 2024

9:00 AM

3 February 2024

9:00 AM

How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now Walter Stephens

Johns Hopkins, pp.576, 30

How do you feel about writing? Does that sound like a bizarre question? OK, what about this? Do you worry that you don’t read enough? About the encroachment of screen time into book time? About the decline of letter-writing or penmanship? In universities, where ChatGPT has made a nightmare of written assessments, lecturers have had to fall back on viva voce interviews to determine whether students are the true authors of the essays they submit.

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