The Future Does Not Compute

The Tyranny of the Detached Word

This is Chapter 16 of The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, by Stephen L. Talbott. Copyright 1995 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved. You may freely redistribute this chapter in its entirety for noncommercial purposes. For information about the author's online newsletter, NETFUTURE: Technology and Human Responsibility, see http://www.netfuture.org/.

I care about the words I write, and that is where the danger begins. Just when I am most taken with their sound and rhythm, their logical articulation, their imagery and meaning -- then the risk is greatest. For words always come from the past, whether from the previous moment's thinking or the earliest genesis of the race. The word's greatest gift -- which is to preserve the thought and meanings that preceded us -- is also its greatest threat, for this enshrined life of the past easily tyrannizes the delicate tracings of fresh thinking.

I'm sure most writers have had experiences like mine: I write a paragraph that “clicks,” and then begin to feel pride in it. But as the larger text evolves, the “inspired” paragraph may no longer fit quite so well. Rather than throw out the valued words, however, I now seek to preserve them by wresting the context into a compatible shape.

Or, what is worse, at every step I allow my thinking itself to be controlled by the direction of the preceding words, so that a train of thought is always rigidly determined by what has gone ...