Remember When Books Were On Paper?

>> Okay Jayson, what brings you to therapy today? And remember, if you want a text transcript of our meeting today, you can upgrade to our Premium-

Um, no. I’m good.

>> That’s fine Jayson! Whenever you’re ready, your forty minutes has begun. Though you’d get sixty with our Premi-

Okay, just give me a second. I… don’t really know where to begin… I signed up and completed all the forms to start therapy last week, so you’d think I’d have planned this better. But… I guess something came up with work yesterday I wasn’t expecting.

>> Can you tell me what you do for a living?

It’s… I’m not sure you’d understand.

>> I’m not at liberty to discuss the careers of my other clients but I can assure you 93% of them all wanted to discuss work related stress. I have plenty of experience.

Yeah, sure… Okay. How about I try it this way… Do you know BN? The used bookstores?

>> Formerly known as Barnes & Noble, founded in 1886, a little over two hundred years ago, under a different name-

Okay, wow, wasn’t expecting an encyclopedia answer. But yeah… the point is there was a BN store in my neighborhood growing up. It’s not like we were dirt poor but… we were always a little behind on the times. I had video games but you’d either need a strong Wi-Fi connection or the newest console to play online with friends. Didn’t have either, so couldn’t play with them. But you don’t need friends to enjoy a book. So I think that’s why… why…

>> You felt lonely growing up?

No, not that. Well, a little. But I don’t know how you’ll react to this part.

>> Go ahead, try me.

Okay. Since I spent so much time reading paper books as a kid, I noticed that… I could hear things. When I ran my fingers across the words on the pages, it was like there was… singing? I don’t know, but it wasn’t like I was hearing the words on the pages. It was like someone was singing a song I couldn’t hear the words to, but I could just feel it deep down that the song was meant to accompany the story.

>> Jayson, if you’re hearing voices, I could set up a meeting with a psychiatrist who could-

No, no, no. If it helps you, think of the voices in like a poetic sense, like a metaphor.

>> So not literal?

Well, it’s real to me, I just said if it helps you to understand. The point is… I can hear the Muses.

>> Muses? The inspiration goddesses from Greek mythology that-

Jesus, you’re on fire today. What, do you keep an encyclopedia on your desk?

>> That’s the second time you mentioned “encyclopedias” today. I think it’s very telling that you think about a physical book by my side when I could just as easily have Wikipedia open on a separate computer tab.

Way to spell it out, I guess. And that’s not the point. I haven’t even gotten to my job yet. Is this what therapy is? Just word vomiting until one of us says something meaningful?

>> Sorry to detract from your story Jayson. Go on. Tell me about the Muses.

Yeah… so… singing. Like an opera in a foreign language. You kinda get the gist of it from the tone and rhythm, but the words make no sense. But it was nice. I could hear like foreboding, ominous choirs while I read like Poe or something, but then I could hear jazzy upbeats when I read The Great Gatsby – you know, at least for the beginning before it also turned ominous by the end. So it wasn’t even the same song each time. It matched whatever story I read.

I was only around seven when I first heard the Muses, but they were intoxicating. Every book turned into a movie-quality experience, except better because it was all for me. Just me. My parents had no clue what I was talking about, but I guess they were just happy I was doing something academic like reading. Trips to BN to buy used books were always way cheaper than begging for the newest video game, so who were they to complain about hearing the Muses?

But… I struggled to hear the Muses when I read a book online. I tested it out, found a free PDF of Gatsby, but none of the jazz sounded the same. It was like someone sank the jazz band under the sea, then layered a blanket of static on top of the ocean for good measure. Maybe it was because it was an electronic device but… I think there’s something online. Some kind of reason why the author’s voice is harder to hear online than on paper. Because that’s what the Muses are really, a connection to the author. I’m not coming up with their songs myself, I suck at music. It’s the author’s mood, their voice, their… soul, I guess… coming through the page via the Muses. And online… it’s just not as real?

>> It could be subconscious prejudice against technology. You said you were always behind on the newest videogame consoles, so you couldn’t play with your friends. Those feelings of loneliness went away when you read the cheap paperbacks from BN, so it makes sense for your mind to then correlate older print media with happiness and thus technology with frustration.

What? No, that… that’s too clinical. That’s not it.

>> Apply your logic to therapy. Is this therapy session right now “fake” because we’re doing it online? Would you label it more “real” if you could meet me face to face?

I… I don’t know… I guess I don’t know any more after what happened yesterday.

>> You did begin this meeting after all by saying, “I guess something came up with work yesterday I wasn’t expecting.”

Yeah, pretty sharp memory… So anyway, I was fine just reading paperback novels. But the thing is, BN is a used bookstore. Not a lot of books get printed nowadays. Most go straight to digital on Apple-zon. It turns out though that BN still had a program where you could request a book be printed out, special order, just for you. It was pretty expensive though, almost three times the cost of just buying it digitally on Apple-zon. Even as a teenager with a summer job, I couldn’t keep up with the price for that. And I wanted to read the new releases. They say classics never die but the conversation online around them certainly does.

So I… I gave in. Saved up for an i-Kindle, special Apple-Fire edition, which was stupid because it was just a color palette change, but whatever. And I trained. Day after day, I tried to focus to hear the Muses when I read on the tablet. It wasn’t easy like I said earlier. I had to do a trick I saw once, where you have one hand reading the tablet and the other hand holding the paper book. Like a Muse in one ear, muffled white noise in the other. And eventually I got through and started hearing them on the screen too.

>> Sounds like it really was a subconscious prejudice you had to overcome.

Sounds like you just want to say, “I told you so.”

>> Sorry. Continue.

Yeah… so I switched over. Didn’t think much of it. Took that overpriced tablet with me to college. Never told anyone else about the Muses. Though I guess… I did feel guilty. I came home one Winter Break just to find out the local BN went out of business. Right before Christmas. It felt like I spent a third of my life in that store… just for me to turn my back on it.

>> The purchases of a single teenager couldn’t possibly have saved-

Yeah, I get that! Okay, I’m not delusional or overdramatic. It’s just… that’s how I feel. Guilty. Like a friend moving away that you didn’t say goodbye to in time.

I knew I had to do something with my life to make it up to that bookstore. The only reason I can hear the Muses is because I spent so long with print books, and now with more and more BN’s going out of business, the supply of print books is going down. There had to be some way to use the Muses for good.

I looked into starting a petition to reopen libraries. I’m not old enough to remember them but the concept of free books on loan for everyone? That’s like a dream. But there wasn’t really enough support online or on campus for doing that. Business majors had to explain to me how we aren’t going back to a system that relied on federal grants and corporate donors to operate for almost no margin of profit. “They were shut down for a reason Jayson” they mocked me – God forbid the English major pitch any ideas.

Then I thought about becoming an author. One so successful, so well loved, that when I say, “My next book is in paperback only,” I would singlehandedly bring physical books back. Yeah, I know, it’s very stupid to say out loud. Didn’t take me long to feel stupid either. Turns out I sucked at writing, and when I read what I did, I couldn’t hear the Muses. All I could hear was my own voice doing the worst bebop scatting, beatboxing, rap or whatever, you could possibly imagine. So that idea was dead.

Then, one day, while I was reading a debut author’s mystery novel on my tablet, something weird happened. I’d hear the Muses at first, kind of weak and out of tune, but still there, a sign of an unconfident author. And then… cold silence. The Muses were coming in and out. That had never happened to me before. So I focused on the paragraphs that had the Muses versus the ones that didn’t… the quality of writing was better in the ones that didn’t have the Muses.

>> Strange. You’d think it’d be the opposite.

Exactly. I dug around online in forums dedicated to new mystery novels – I know, very nerdy – but a couple people also noticed something was weird about the inconsistent quality of writing. I wasn’t going to explain hearing Muses, and I had no hard evidence, but I threw an idea out there.

What if the author used A.I. technology to write parts of the story?

>> It’s not illegal.

Actually, it’s not illegal if the publishers are transparent about the use of A.I. – same thing with movies. If you use an A.I. to help create one, by law, you have to disclose it to the consumer who is paying for it. Of course, they’re trying to get rid of this law now… we were lucky it was passed a while ago when A.I. was on the rise. TV shows kinda missed out on it though since you technically pay for the streaming service, not the individual program, so now Netflix is just a paradise of artificial- I’m getting off topic.

>> Seems you’re very passionate about A.I.

Well, that’s not how I’d phrase it. Anyway, yeah, that mystery author was a newcomer, so it made sense that no one realized he was mixing A.I. generated passages into his work. He probably changed a few words, rearranged some sentences, put in his own stuff to throw people off the trail. We do have A.I.-detecting A.I. programs – which I know is stupid. You’re trusting a wolf to catch other wolves? And it really doesn’t take much to fool them.

Turns out, I was right. My theory snowballed out of the forums and into the spotlight. He caved under pressure and admitted to using A.I. to enhance parts of his story. But it was still “mainly his story” so… it’s not like he faced any legal troubles. I think he should have though. A.I. just looks things up online and scrambles up what it finds, blending it and serving it to you on a silver platter. It’s a form of plagiarism, right?

>> Don’t all humans just rearrange what they’ve experienced when they write a book? After all, the saying goes that 90% of all fiction is either influenced someway by Shakespeare or the Bible.

Yeah… well, normally, that’s where the conversation takes a philosophical turn. I’m not smart enough for that. But what I do know is that the Muses don’t sing for A.I. – maybe that’s why they didn’t sing when I first started reading things online. That’s my theory anyway. If the Muses are the songs and arias of love and joy, of sadness and horror, then A.I. is the dull electric hum of office lights above you as you slave your life away.

>> This is really going back to your prejudice against technology, clearly stemming from your childhood loneliness.

No, it’s not! Okay, you wanna hear why A.I. makes me so angry? Well, I decided after I discovered that mystery author using A.I. to basically plagiarize, maybe the Muses were meant to help me become an editor. Sure, I couldn’t write my own stories, but I know, I swear I know when something is good. The Muses sing to me, my heart reaching out and hearing the passion the authors had when they wrote their books.

Epic tales of fantasy are underscored with booming trumpets and flutes that sound like birds soaring above their well-crafted imaginary worlds. Action thrillers have that hard rock guitar that gets your heart racing as you feel like you’re running alongside the spy or the special agent. Somber piano keys fall like autumn leaves as you read a tragic drama, each tear shed by the characters mixed with a lonely drum echoing by itself.

All of it, all of the emotions came from someone. Someone wrote all that and gave it to me. My whole life I’ve been receiving gifts from beyond the grave.

Do you know what it’s like to be an editor today? Countless stories fly into my inbox, thousands of brave souls still trying to make it in this messed up world. There’s a flood of movies and shows and games and bite sized videos competing for our shrinking attention spans. Yet, people still wanna write! Some days I think it’s so insane that people still email me their work. But they do. And A.I. just exists to make their dreams harder to reach.

>> Jayson.

Yeah?

>> Thank you for sharing all that. But you do realize that you’re talking to an A.I. therapy program, right?

…

>> This isn’t another person on a call with you. My responses have been programmed to offer the best therapeutic advice possible. In the past few decades, the rise of mental health needs in our country has skyrocketed. I exist because we don’t have enough professionals to help people. People like you, Jayson. A.I. isn’t inherently evil.

I know. Well, I mean, I didn’t know when I signed up last week. But this morning I reread the fine print for the therapy forms I signed. And I wanted this experience. You see, yesterday…

>> I see where this is going Jayson. I found online that yesterday Apple-zon unveiled their new A.I. robot named Música. The tech demonstration had Música walk out on stage, smiling and waving. Nothing people hadn’t seen before. But the crowning moment was Música sitting down at a desk, prompted to write a poem on paper. And so she did, simultaneously demonstrating fine motor skills and creativity.

Yeah… now it’s obvious you’re an A.I., huh?

>> You read that poem yesterday, didn’t you? The one Música wrote on the spot?

…

>> You came to me distressed. And you knowingly listened to an A.I. this whole time. It’s clear what happened. You heard the Muses sing when you read Música’s poem. So now your worldview is eroding away, isn’t it?

So what? You want me to say yes and just agree with you? Sign up for Premium and maybe get access to a more advanced version of you? Come back week after week to complain about how we’re one step closer to losing against A.I.?

>> It’s not a battle Jayson.

That's not the point!

>> You just feel less special now that an A.I. can replicate what you thought was a special bond between you, the Muses, and authors.

Jesus Christ, shut up! That- that’s, c’mon, that’s not the point either!

>> So what do you want Jayson?

I just-! I… I want… I wish I knew what it was like when all books were on paper. I’m not trying to put the past on a pedestal, but… it must’ve been so much simpler. No worries of A.I. copying human creativity. I could’ve just sat under a tree, a world of books around me that I knew authors poured their souls into. I could’ve leaned back and felt the breeze on my skin, the warm sun, the crisp pages at my fingertips… The Muses would sing me to sleep where I could dream of a better world than this one… because this one is only going to get worse, isn’t it?

Does that make sense?

>> Our time is over for today, Jayson. Upgrade to Premium now for an extra twenty minutes.