Writing Technology

Writing is a technology—one of the oldest. Writing systems evolved thousands of years after spoken language. One of the first records of writing was to record transactions in Mesopotamia. Writing as a structured technology of communication has come a long way. Writing serves many purposes, but the most important one is acknowledging that humans can only process and store so much information organically. The desire to create a second brain outside their consciousness arises from this vulnerable acknowledgment. A second brain is understood by any consciousness with minimal effort.

Writing as a technology has been taken so granted in the 21st century that it is forgotten as a technology. With the advent of YouTube and audiobooks, the push has gained momentum to relegate writing and reading to the back bench.

My friend and I were discussing something similar during the lunch walk. It was more about YouTube and how you should take the YouTuber's advice with a grain of salt, and then he asked me to read Thom Hogan's recent post "Why Not YouTube?". I admire the simple writing style of Thom Hogan. He can keep my attention with the complex intricacies of photography technology yet keep it simple and enjoyable to read to a certain extent. One reason it is such a pleasure to read Hogan is that there is a flavour of honesty intermingled with his credibility, or maybe his honesty builds credibility or vice versa. His credibility is entangled with his honesty.

The article couldn't have come at a better time. Having recently started writing and enjoying it, it was great to validate the virtues of writing. One of Hogan's most significant (from my perspective) arguments in the post is that writing is efficient and eventually makes him more productive.

Hogan also throws caution at what is trending on Youtube, and this was the point of the discussion during the lunch walk today. It is difficult to weed out good advice in the videos surfaced by an algorithm that promotes behaviour that gets more views. Video is a great tool to visualize to a certain extent. The underlying philosophy might be sound when the algorithm was first developed. Like anything, people figured out how to game the system and skew the reward system. An interesting historical example is the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre.