Something New

It is alluring to try to monetize your writing, especially when you love doing it, like I do. But it is hard to monetize random ramblings, so over the years I have had several ideas for more comprehensive themes.

My latest disenchantment with tech makes it even harder for that theme to stick. It is no fun to write about tech when everything seems to be about AI, and you don’t even like AI that much.

I had another idea over the last week and played with multiple platforms to host it. Surprisingly, Substack looked the most promising, mostly because the audience felt right for the idea, and because they seem to have solved the discovery issue, in my opinion.

I went as far as creating a new publication, and I think it looks nice. However, after spending some time on the platform, it hit me that this is yet another social network — with its own algorithm, growth hacks, and many other things I hate.

So I decided to stick with what I already have: Pagecord. I simplified the theme and the name of my publication into a tag here: #wdsh.

This way, I’ll be able to control both the means of production — myself — and the flow of commerce, which is currently non-existent.

You’ll find the intro post below.

If you want to join me on this adventure, you can support me monthly on Ko-fi and add the RSS feed for this tag to your reader.

Artificial Intelligence is a marketing misnomer. It is artificial, no doubt. But is it intelligent?

They call these systems “AI” because the phrase is useful for them. It sells. It excites investors. It makes software feel almost alive. But what we are really dealing with is not a mind. It is software trained on vast amounts of human output, predicting what should come next based on patterns it has learned. But is that intelligence?

One can argue that the human brain also works something like this. We also rely on patterns, memory, previous experience, and things we have absorbed from the world. But there is still something about it that allows us to create, compose, and bring something new into this world. Something creative.

Yes, it is always based on something from the past. But it is still unique to each person. The same book, the same conversation, the same memory can become completely different things in different minds. Can the same be said about AI?

There is also that old saying: all stories have already been told. You can’t come up with anything completely new. Maybe. But who cares?

You don’t need to tell a completely new story. You need to tell your story. And that alone makes it different. The same plot, the same theme, the same conflict can become something else in another person’s hands. That is why we continue to write books and tell new stories. Even the words suggest it: novellas, novels.

Something new. Something human.

So how do writers find stories to write? Where do they get their ideas, and how?

Inspired by the latest post from Elif Shafak, I’m launching a new series in search of the answer to one simple question:

Where Do Stories Hide?