If you don’t know the story of John Henry, the short version is: He dug tunnels for the railroad. He swings a hammer better than anyone ever has. One day, his vindictive boss introduces a steam drill to replace him and his pals. John challenges the steam drill. Miraculously, he wins. Then he drops dead.
But maybe he watched the machine, and considered the nasty disposition of management, and rethought his vocation. Driving steel is over, he decides. He takes his meager savings and his family across the country, trying this and that, before finally landing a decent job as a sand-shoveler at a gravel pit.
Soon, he’s the greatest sand-shoveler the world has ever seen. It’s not quite as dramatic as swinging a hammer, but it’s something. Then one day, the previously benevolent bosses unpack a giant crate. It’s a steam shovel. By now, John Henry is too old and too tired to start over.
Maybe that’s a song - a sad-sack album track on a Springsteen album.
Wordcount
L. Ron Hubbard is supposed to have written 65 million words. Of course, a lot of them were repeats. Ha!
But seriously, he did. He did it because he was being paid by the word. And he still didn’t get paid boat-buying money until he started a religion.
Since then, writing has gotten easier. If you don’t believe me, just try writing a refutation to that statement on a typewriter and correcting your typos with the old white-ink typing ribbon. You have 30 minutes.
Processing
The word processor is why writing is easier. And this was a big deal when I was a kid. Wang Laboratories made one of the first widely used word processors, and it was a major employer in Massachusetts in the ‘80s, and my father worked there, among other tech companies, mostly as a salesman.
One day, my father called to ask me how to cut and paste, then asked me to slow down while I explained, so he could write it down. When I reminded him that he’d worked thirty years in the tech industry, he said “I was mostly buying guys lunch.”
I didn’t want to know
The other day, under the usual commercial duress-slash-inducement, I used artificial intelligence to write something.
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