#I fully expect that the copyright angle will predominate discourse for the forseeable future

[onewomancitadel]

A polemic

So NaNoWriMo (the event in November where you try to write 50,000 words in a month) has announced its position on the usage of machine generation, which is that to ban it would be ableist and classist.

The really interesting thing here to me, is that this is the thing that does your thinking for you and removes your actual participation in generating writing and generating ideas. It is not in my view an actual assistive device in the sense that it enables a disabled person to complete the same task with or near the ability as an abled person and in my view condescending to pretend that it is so.

There was a real worry about the keyboard (or indeed the typewriter) interfering with the creative process of meditating on each word you must write by hand. And then way back when, the idea of writing words down as opposed to oral performance had the same sort of fear shroud it (this is what makes Plato's dialogues so interesting from a perspective of form, because it is intended to mimic those conversational forms in writing. I'm not a classicist please be nice to me). Understandably the argument here is that the influence of technological evolution on the creative process - where the process is the craft - is something we can easily draw parallel from to argue machine generation is perfectly fine.

To circle back to the most recent change, the keyboard, for instance, lets me write basically as quickly as I can think. It is superior for creative writing because I can be fully immersed in my prose work to the point I forget everything else because I am so in tune with it. I forget to meet my human bodily needs - I forget to eat and drink, I lose all sense of time. Essays written on the computer are my preference by far. Meanwhile, I prefer taking notes by hand for uni lectures and classes: I remember things better that way; I can write very fast and take only what I know I need; I don't dither, and most importantly I don't divert my attention from a lecture or discussion to the pure focus of writing on a keyboard. I also keep a notebook for brainstorming, drafting, that sort of thing. My process here resists the idea that keyboard = new = good = supplanting all else, but keyboard also very good sometimes.

But a disabled person who cannot use a keyboard is not going to have an easy time as me - so what are the ways that enable them to transcribe their thoughts? Making it fit for an individual person's disability is going to be a case-by-case basis, but there are ways of tailoring keyboards to the specific limbs or fingers that a disabled person may be able to use, or to fit their comfort needs - it will cost more than a regular keyboard, but there are more programs to support accessibility for disabled people than there were before (sometimes also for trialling the use of these technologies, like with game controllers, I've seen a lot of those in recent times) - which in part is a complicated process because lots of people have different types of disabilities. Somebody who is blind will require very diffierent support from somebody who has sight.

Machine generation doesn't transcribe your thoughts. Machine generation does the thinking and execution. It doesn't matter how you change it or edit it, you have to be totally honest about what you're doing: you're outsourcing your thinking. It is condescending to say that disabled people do not deserve to think. This includes people who struggle with thinking, or struggle with focus, or struggle with mental illness which stymies that actual motivation to write. Thinking, dreaming, and writing are themselves sources of and motivation for existence, and to outsource that, to me, is grossly offensive. (I am not going to introduce my personal background in here, but if you try to dispute that MG should help mentally ill people to write... if there is one thing which alleviates my existence in any way, it's writing).

The stylus on clay tablet, the pen, the typewriter, the keyboard, never did your thinking for you.

The classist dispute is interesting.

I see. (I checked Big W and JB Hi-Fi. Big W has the better deals I think with mouse included. Also, my most beloved keyboard I used to write for several years was $12 originally but my brother got it for free where he worked. Don't knock a cheap keyboard 'til you try it. You don't need a fancy gaming keyboard).

Most people probably have smart phones they can write on (the cheapest you can find are around ~$200AUD), but you generally want to be writing on a computer. Laptops aren't good investments in the long run and are fairly expensive, so let's say you want a desktop PC, in which case I would say get a refurbished computer like me. For the screen, the computer itself, and all the cables needed, I paid $200 including shipping, and it came with a free keyboard and mouse as well as year's warranty. Of course you might have the issue of a desk and chair as well, in which case I suggest op-shops, but if you are Australian don't write off the non-Ikeas; sometimes local furniture shops having sales are actually cheaper.

But if you are really working within limited means with absolutely nothing spare, there are library computers you may be able to access off the top of my head, and if you are a uni student, there are going to be computers available there. If the angle we're arguing is that it's limiting to people living in poverty to bar their use of machine generation, you're basically saying that if you're poor enough, then you shouldn't be allowed to dream and write yourself. Nuh uh.

This is actually so fucking obtuse lol.

In the case of a writing marathon, there is nothing weird about using the library or school or whatever to do your writing. 50,000 words spread across a month means you want to hit a little over 10,000 words a week, so let's say you ideally want 2,000 words a day, and if you're anxious about using a public space that much, let's say you want to go there five days a week so you need probably more in the realm of 3-5,000. But I think it would be fully doable if it's the event you've signed up to, and maybe you'd end up focussing better in a study-oriented space like that...

Critically the argument is founded on the idea that machine generation constitutes assistance and does not constitute the outsourcing of your own thinking. The argument normally launched against machine generation is from the repurposing of original creative material; the usage of machine generation is posited as 'sticking it to the man' punkish rebellion against copyright infringement, e.g.

this refrain was actually was the impetus for writing this post altogether, because it is so disingenuous as well as cruel and embarrassing, but I thought it was really interesting as well. Obviously that's not the angle I've taken throughout this post because I think that there is a weakness to this argument for a reason: yes, machine generation doesn't 'genuinely' remix material in the way the human alchemist imagination does, but the black box processes are kind of an ambiguous grey area. The real heart of this here is the allegation that legal enforcement of something is fundamentally heartless, not that laws and regulations in society are meant to actually service that society. It's concerning when they don't.

So it's really an anarchist sort of punk view versus my own which is that the hope would be that copyright laws protect artists (in the case of Disney it's clearly not so; that is neither here nor there), but that's really why I'm not arguing against that idea. I'm arguing against the idea that machine generation constitutes an assistive device, which it doesn't, because it supplants the person involved. Even if the way you feed an idea to machine generation is the way you've thought of it, its generated text is not yours; the machine generated it, irrespective of how that machine is trained off other texts. Even if you use it to merely brainstorm - and let's be real, that's not what's being argued here - it's offering ideas back at you the way a keyboard wouldn't.

Yes, I hate autofill text too. It should be turned off in word processing documents because it's disruptive.

The insistence is that machine generation is trained off other texts, and when you generate using those texts, you now have text that is some other author's work (because the machine generation is not thinking-feeling). The refutation to this from the pro-MG side is that this is what all authors naturally do, and then the refutation here follows that MG does not naturally transform a text the way a human would, always adding their own spin, always iterating. The pro-MG side then disputes that this difference is minimal and by the time a human involved edits the text - which is necessary at this point - it becomes something else. (That few people seemingly edit the text is beside the point).

I am rejecting this entire argument. I am also rejecting the idea that disabled people and poorer people should have to sit out NaNoWriMo because it may not be within their means, and I'm not going to dispute that at all; actually they should get to do whatever writing challenges they want, within whatever means that they require or desire, the same as any other person. That they meet those goals with different means because they can't do everything the same as an abled person is not in question.

Let's say an abled person chooses to attempt NaNoWriMo writing by hand. It's not roleplaying at making life difficult; let's say the individual has real difficulty with keyboards - or they can't afford a computer! I can handwrite several thousand words in a day and it would be fully possible, though with a lot of handcramping; it would require lots of pausing and stretching. I would get sick of it by Day 2. But it would be no less a legitimate attempt compared to other abled people who choose to attempt the marathon with a keyboard, or vice versa.

But I really wanted to square out my problems with people who launch criticism against MG and people who launch defenses at MG, because it goes around and around in circles. My issue with it is not necessarily an issue of copyright, though no doubt from a legalistic perspective that is in which the defense will be made; my view is one grounded in what the actual activity of writing is, and who deserves to have access to that (everybody) and where MG supplants that (fundamentally). Where writing begins is in your head. It is dreaming, brainstorming, thinking, and then executing that in constructed prose. When you don't do that, you're not writing at all.