jamesshelley-com-iaarz3.txt (7996B)
1 What’s the fun in writing on the internet anymore? 2 3 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 4 5 You are reading some words on the internet. 6 7 Think about all the things you could do with these words. 8 9 You could copy and paste this article into ChatGPT and say, “Please rewrite and 10 paraphrase this blog post in such a way as to keep its main points and 11 observations, but substantively reconfigure the text to make the original 12 version undetectable.” And then, just like that, you have content for your own 13 blog. So easy. 14 15 Or you could just copy the contents of this page and paste it into a site like 16 plagiarism-remover.com so you could, as advertised, “Easily Convert Your 17 Plagiarism article Into Plagiarism Free article.” Or you could use Spinbot. Or 18 Jasper. Or QuillBot. Or Paraphraser. And so on. 19 20 You can now spin up [1]new, “original” articles faster and easier than even 21 reading the originals. This is a dizzying and dumbfounding new reality, when 22 you stop and think about it: automated plagiarism is now more efficient than 23 reading itself. 24 25 All the same, if you want to skip the whole paraphrase/spin step, you could 26 instead [2]copy and paste this article verbatim into a newsletter served up 27 behind a paywall. This strategy drastically reduces the odds that it will be 28 recognized as plagiarism on the open web. And, hey, why not make a few extra 29 bucks? (Perhaps ironically, turbo-charged content spinning is so pervasive that 30 [3]evermore sites require user logins just to access content. This seems 31 vicious: repurposing content engenders the proliferation of walled gardens and 32 walled gardens, in turn, engenders the proliferation of repurposed content.) 33 34 In summary, it feels like the fate of words on the internet is to be 35 paraphrased. Emerging tools like [4]Perplexity.ai respond to quiries with 36 fulsome answers that do not require users to even click off the site. In other 37 words, search itself is becoming the delivery of paraphrase and summary. Waning 38 are the days of sifting through “search results” to find a specific source. 39 Henceforth, digital words are little more than raw data to be crunched, 40 processed, and served up by third-party intermediaries. 41 42 The “moral rights” of the author. Copyright. Attribution. We have grown to 43 assume these concepts as givens, but they are rapidly sliding into practical 44 irrelevance in the age of AI and paywalls. To put any thoughtful labour into 45 crafting words online today is to watch them get sucked up, repurposed, and 46 often monetized by someone else. It feels a bit like a digital wasteland; 47 overrun with pirates, replete with armies of robots regurgitating everything 48 into a gooey cocktail of digital sludge. 49 50 It is interesting to speculate about the future. It seems like people might 51 eventually grow skeptical about investing their personal creativity in such a 52 space, right? Will anyone bother writing on the internet when they know their 53 words will be pilfered and junkified? What happens to the craft of writing 54 itself when our de facto global platform for sharing text no longer reinforces 55 or recognizes the role or rights of authorship? 56 57 To ponder this question, we can look back. In some ways, today’s internet 58 evermore reminds of the world I encountered back in classical studies. There 59 are bits of papyrus and parchment are flying around everywhere. Some texts 60 claim attribution, some are anonymous, and a lot are pseudonymous—and you can’t 61 tease any of this apart with any certainty. There are competing manuscripts, 62 copies of copies, and significant “versioning issues” everywhere you look. 63 Ultimately, the credence and authority you give to any specific text typically 64 reflects the trust your community bestows on it. The only words that survive 65 are the ones that get copied. This all sounds strangely familiar, yes? 66 67 If you were lucky and wealthy enough to write in antiquity, your scribbles went 68 out into the world to completely unknown ends. Authorship, accompanied by 69 newfangled attributions of moral and legal entitlements, is not yet a refined 70 concept. Once you “release” the words, you categorically relinquish control of 71 them. And you are fully aware that the more clever and helpful your words are 72 to others, the more likely it is that future readers will attribute your words 73 to someone else. 74 75 Sic semper erat, et sic semper erit. The better your words, the more likely it 76 is that somebody will poach them. Somebody will probably “paraphrase” your work 77 beyond detection. Somebody will “republish” it as their “original.” Somebody 78 else will train their large language model on your text and serve it up without 79 citations or footnotes. To write on today’s internet and assume universal 80 respect for your “moral rights of authorship” is an act of grand delusion. 81 82 You might as well write anonymous papyrus fragments. 83 84 And this is the point. 85 86 None of this really matters. 87 88 Whether papyrus or the internet, humans doggedly write for influence, status, 89 wealth, conviction, and pleasure. But the so-called sanctity of “authorship” is 90 only a very recent idea. These “rights” of authorship are only true if they are 91 enforced. They are a kind of fiction that only make sense in occasional times, 92 places, and cultures. For the next chapter of the human experiment, I wonder if 93 “authorship” will again recede into the background, as it often seems to do in 94 times of disruptive changes in communication technology. 95 96 But the banishment of the author doesn’t mean writing ends. Writers still write 97 even when “authorship” functionally means nothing. And what they write still 98 influences their world, with or without the universe dutifully paying homage to 99 their bylines. In the long arcs of history, what is written typically goes on 100 to mean much more than who wrote it. The future, like today, is built on ideas, 101 not on the people who had them, because people die but ideas never stop 102 evolving. 103 104 And the future needs ideas—not auto-generated “summaries” of old ones. 105 106 So, what’s the fun of writing on the internet anymore? Well, if your aim is to 107 be respected as an author, there’s probably not much fun to be had here at all. 108 Don’t write online for fame and glory. Oblivion, obscurity and exploitation are 109 all but guaranteed. Write here because ideas matter, not authorship. Write here 110 because the more robots, pirates, and single-minded trolls swallow up 111 cyberspace, the more we need independent writing in order to think new thoughts 112 in the future — even if your words are getting dished up and plated by an 113 algorithm. 114 115 Those who write — those who add ideas instead of paraphrasing and regurgitating 116 them — inform the lexicology and mental corpus of how we think in the future. 117 Indeed, the point isn’t “being an author,” but contributing one’s perspective, 118 even if one’s personal identity is silenced, erased, and anonymized along the 119 way. 120 121 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 122 123 This post on [5]jamesshelley.com is copyright © 2024 by [6]James Shelley 124 Released under a [7]Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license 125 126 Friday, February 16, 2024 127 128 129 References: 130 131 [1] https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/chat-gpt-openai-jasper-hugging-face-plagiarism-big-technology.html 132 [2] https://jamesshelley.com/blog/on-being-plagiarized.html 133 [3] https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/02/six-months-in-journalist-owned-tech-publication-404-media-is-profitable/ 134 [4] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/google-search-results-ET4ll7tdT6axzwgifCC3Gw?s=c 135 [5] https://jamesshelley.com/ 136 [6] https://jamesshelley.com/ 137 [7] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0