I spent a lot of time thinking about this question because it seems as if there should be things in our lives that need uninventing, but I can’t think of any. There are a lot of things that have far reaching ramifications that I don’t like, such as generative artificial intelligence, but since it’s a direct result of computers and the internet, if it was un-invented, it would simply be reinvented.
There are things I don’t like, of course, but I try to stay away from them. It’s easy enough to do, most of the time. Keep the computer off, put the phone on airplane mode (as I do at night since no one is depending on me, and even if there were, there is nothing I could do about it that late anyway), don’t read books published after 2022 unless I’m familiar with the author.
Even though in some form, artificial intelligence has been around since the 1960s, models for the public like ChatGPT weren’t released until late 2022, and it seems as if the writing world has gobbled up the technology. People like that they can write a book in a day! Yay! Well, yay for them, not for me. I read to connect with the author’s view of the world, to find perhaps more depth to my own world. Connecting with artificial intelligence would not be the same thing at all. I’m sure, with time, generative AI will master even the complexity of human thought and emotions, developing novels that have layers to them, but I’m not interested.
Actually, I’m not interested in most authors who were first published in the past ten or fifteen years. There seems to be an underlying nastiness to so many of them, with unreliable characters lying in their own POV about what they did and about other characters, so the reader doesn’t know and can’t guess how appalling the unreliable character is until the end when you find out they were the bad guy all along. Eek. I don’t know if this is the sort of story new writers prefer or if it’s what editors are looking for, but either way, I don’t like being left with a feeling of squalor, as if there’s a thin film of filth on my soul.
But I am getting away from the point of what I would uninvent — nothing. On the other hand, if I could get rid of some policies, that I would gladly do.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
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