Metawriting

The great AI tsunami of destruction is rolling up the shores of the “knowledge economy”, wiping out hundreds of millions of white-collar jobs. All kinds of analysts, programmers, researchers, accountants and sales reps are about to become unemployable. So are writers.

Ted Kaczynski wrote at length about the process of technology disrupting society. One of the arguments he made in Industrial Society And Its Future is that technology forces humans to adapt to it, rather than the other way around. Cellphones are an example: once a useful tool to stay connected while on the road, they are now virtually necessary to partake in employment.

AI technology is going to likewise force people to adapt to it – by making them obsolete. Tremendous numbers of white-collar jobs are about to simply disappear, replaced by app output. Most copywriters are going to be obliterated, but certain other writers won’t. These will be the people skilled at metawriting.

Photography made most of painting and drawing obsolete. There was no longer a need to pay someone to paint a portrait over several weeks, when a photo could be taken of them instantly. But the advent of photography led to something previously rare: low-quality art. The price of entry was now so low that unskilled people could produce art at almost no cost to themselves.

Now, choice became a thing. This is why some people don’t get the art of photography: they can’t understand the meta, the choice of what to photograph. Many subjects are not interesting or beautiful, and therefore not worthy of depiction. Other subjects can be made more interesting or beautiful by choosing the right framing, or the right contrasts.

By the same token, AI has made elements of writing obsolete. When I was at school, being able to spell was a big deal. It distinguished the bright from the dull. Now, no-one cares about spelling, sentence composition or paragraph composition. AI can do all of that. But now, choice of prompt has become important.

The 21st Century art form known as metawriting is the art of making the subject more interesting, or more beautiful, by choosing the right framing, the right contrasts, or by some other way. This metawriting will remain an art, no matter how advanced AI gets, because AI can’t be programmed to have taste.

It’s possible already now to churn out thousands of books that no-one will have any interest in reading because, despite being technically well-written, the metawriting is poor. The prompter might not understand the subject well enough to cover the main issues. They might devote too much space to irrelevancies. Metawriting can be cliched, too, if the piece covers already well-trodden intellectual paths.

In the future, the art of writing will go through a change akin to the change from painting to photography. The best writers will still need to possess an artistic talent akin to the best photographers. No longer will an author be able to “phone it in” by thoughtlessly writing about boring subjects in neat prose. Anyone can write neat prose with AI now, and they will focus on all manner of subjects. The writers of the future will have to accept this reality.

The writers of the future will still need to be readers, in order to know what to write about. They will still have to be deeply cultural and informed so as to understand the historical and social context in which they are writing. They will still be forced to understand the psychology of their readers in order to appeal to them. They will still need to understand their competition, what that competition are writing about, and what are fashionable and unfashionable subjects to write about. They will still have to account for political correctness and what the power structure wants people to write about and to ignore.

It may be that people become more skilled metawriters even as they become less skilled writers.

*

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

*

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2024-25
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2023
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2022
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2021
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2020
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018
Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017

*

If you would like to support our work in other ways, make a donation to our Paypal! Even better, buy any one of our books!