I first learned about artificial intelligence (AI) in the seventh grade. While reading "EPICAC," a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, I learned all about EPICAC, the world's first electronic general-purpose computer, and two of its handlers. Like others in my English class, I learned about the possibilities and problems of using technology to produce art.
In Vonnegut's story, the unnamed narrator, a nerdy mathematician, asks EPICAC to write poems to win over Pat, a reluctant colleague. He succeeds when he passes off the computer's work as his own. Pat agrees to marry him, provided that he write her a poem every anniversary. All is well, in fact, until EPICAC falls in love with Pat and destroys itself trying to understand why it cannot marry a human.
Since that time, I have viewed the fusion of technology and art with a decidedly jaded eye. I believe literature, like other art, should be imperfect, messy, and most of all, authentic, something brimming with quirks and idiosyncrasies. It should be more man than machine.
Others take a different view. In recent years, they have flooded the market with movies, music, and images that were created with the help of computers. Some have used tools that are accessible online.
As an author, I have focused more on AI's impact on writing and publishing. So have others. The Columbia Journalism Review detailed AI's impact on journalism earlier this month. Other publications, such as Forbes and Publishers Weekly, have explained how technology is changing the way authors and publishers produce books.
Artificial intelligence has even seeped into the realm of audiobooks. A few weeks ago, Amazon began offering authors the option of having their works narrated with a virtual voice. Examples of the new technology, still in the beta stage, can be found here.
Being something of a Luddite, I have resisted the trend toward AI, but even I recognize the promise it holds and how it can be used within acceptable boundaries. For several weeks now, I have used Google Gemini, an AI chatbot and research assistant, as a tool in finding information about the United States in the 1770s. I intend to use it even more in the days to come as I finish my research for my next novel.
Even so, I will keep most new technologies at bay. I will produce books as I have done for twelve years now and will probably do for twelve more. I will use AI for research, but never for writing.
I will take that approach with other things as well, including those more personal. For 37 years, I have written my wife, Cheryl, a poem every anniversary. Most are cringey limericks, haikus, and sonnets I wouldn't share in a tavern, but all are original and authentic. Unlike the narrator in "ENICAC," I did my own work. That's how it should be.
Thursday, February 8, 2024
Friday, February 2, 2024
The City of Brotherly Love
I have never been to Philadelphia. Once, in 1984, while driving with a college friend from Connecticut to Washington, D.C., I entered the city's New Jersey suburbs on Interstate 295, but not the city itself.
Since then, I have not come even close to the place that gave us the Phillies, cheesesteaks, and most important, the Declaration of Independence. Like a lot of people, I have seen the city from afar and not given it a second thought. That changed last month, at least in a figurative sense, when I began researching the Philadelphia of the late 1770s, the primary setting of my next novel and time-travel trilogy.
Since January 1, I have read books and articles, contacted experts, and watched movies and television series to get a better understanding of a setting that is as important to democracy as the declaration itself.
As I did, I learned that Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, was a pretty big deal. With a population of forty thousand, it was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere in 1776 and the center of commerce and culture in British North America. It boasted America's first library, hospital, and university. (Harvard, alas, was a mere college.)
It also featured interesting people. Ben Franklin put his stamp on the city. So did George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, William Howe, and the treasonous trio of Benedict Arnold, Peggy Shippen, and John André. All added color and intrigue to a town that never rested during America's eight-year war for independence. Some, like Franklin and Shippen, will mingle with my protagonists in the first book. Others, like Washington, will do so in the second and third.
The protagonists, two brothers from 2024, will also experience Philadelphia. They will visit the city's bustling waterfront, Independence Hall, High Street Market, City Tavern, and the countryside between Philadelphia and Upper Merion Township, where a mysterious stone shed will serve as a time portal in all three books. They will see their native Pennsylvania as it existed in the 1770s and other eras.
I hope to finish researching Philadelphia, the war, and the 1770s this month and begin writing the book itself in March or early April.
Image Credit: In "Washington's Inaugration at Philadelphia," an oil painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930), George Washington arrives at Congress Hall in Philadelphia on March 4, 1793. The public domain illustration is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Since then, I have not come even close to the place that gave us the Phillies, cheesesteaks, and most important, the Declaration of Independence. Like a lot of people, I have seen the city from afar and not given it a second thought. That changed last month, at least in a figurative sense, when I began researching the Philadelphia of the late 1770s, the primary setting of my next novel and time-travel trilogy.
As I did, I learned that Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, was a pretty big deal. With a population of forty thousand, it was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere in 1776 and the center of commerce and culture in British North America. It boasted America's first library, hospital, and university. (Harvard, alas, was a mere college.)
It also featured interesting people. Ben Franklin put his stamp on the city. So did George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, William Howe, and the treasonous trio of Benedict Arnold, Peggy Shippen, and John André. All added color and intrigue to a town that never rested during America's eight-year war for independence. Some, like Franklin and Shippen, will mingle with my protagonists in the first book. Others, like Washington, will do so in the second and third.
The protagonists, two brothers from 2024, will also experience Philadelphia. They will visit the city's bustling waterfront, Independence Hall, High Street Market, City Tavern, and the countryside between Philadelphia and Upper Merion Township, where a mysterious stone shed will serve as a time portal in all three books. They will see their native Pennsylvania as it existed in the 1770s and other eras.
I hope to finish researching Philadelphia, the war, and the 1770s this month and begin writing the book itself in March or early April.
Image Credit: In "Washington's Inaugration at Philadelphia," an oil painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930), George Washington arrives at Congress Hall in Philadelphia on March 4, 1793. The public domain illustration is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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