Is Writing Still Relevant?

Continuing my series from last week on the point/value of writing, today I will be tackling a question that seems to grow more pressing every day: in our tech-heavy world, and especially with the advent of ChatGPT, is writing, whether creative or even just professional, still relevant anymore? The argument of writing as some sort of a useless, outdated skill is one I see far more often then one would think, and troubles me greatly. It is clear to me, especially living in the very tech-heavy city of Seattle, that there are a good number of people who believe STEM and the humanities to be inherently incompatible, and that writing is basically a waste of time and fun hobby at best. After all, now that an AI can write emails for us, why even make an attempt to learn how to express ourselves well on paper? The answer to this is multifaceted, but at its core it is simple. There will never be a time when writing becomes irrelevant, and that is because, even if ChatGPT became just as good a writer as the best of us (which would, truthfully, be terrifying), we would still have every reason to study literature and care about our abilities to convey narratives and make arguments with the pen. As I wrote in an op-ed to the Seattle Times that was published last Fall, the ability to write well is only one byproduct of a study of literature or the written word in general. Many people see this as the only byproduct, which is the central problem here. Simply put, no field within the humanities is crucial simply because of the information it seeks to share. Rather, the core value of writing and the humanities are their abilities to inspire individual development, by using art, culture, and philosophy as methods to make sense of the world and better our lives. Creative writing is beautiful and immortal because, as I shared last week, it both provides benefit to society through the sharing of art, and provides benefit to authors through the intellectual transformation that is the writing process. So while the actual product of your work holds immense value, I would argue that even more valuable to an author is the work you had to undergo to reach completion. That is why ChatGPT is no real threat to the relevance of writing. The personal aspect is something that nothing and nobody can take away.