Wednesday, April 9, 2025

This is the eighteenth installment of West Wind, your daily drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season.

Recently I learned about an initiative where Amazon is trying to have its authors use AI narration for their audiobooks. This made me irate for multiple reasons, not only because of how harmful generative AI is, but also because as an audiobook narrator myself (which will be released soon, I promise), it is kind of an affront. They’re saying that they don’t need us anymore, that this technology will do the job cheaper, faster, and more efficiently. There’s that word again. Efficiency.

I’ve been reading Matthew Kelly’s book Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy, and it’s really helped me to understand a lot of important things. The basic plot of the book is that busy-ness (not business) is harmful to our lives and societies, and that slowing down, taking things in order, and appreciating the world around us and our relationships with each other is the most important thing in life, not being efficient and productive. As an author on today's internet, I am constantly being told that I need to work harder to sell more books, reach a greater audience, and be more relevant. I am daily reminded of my 25 book to-be written backlog that I don't know if I will be able to finish in my lifetime. And that's not to mention all the other roles and responsibilities I have in my life.

So it makes sense why people would turn to AI as a useful tool to increase efficiency and productivity. But as one of my other favorite writers, Wendell Berry, said about agriculture: if a man can plow a field with a mechanized tractor in an hour that it would have taken him all day with a horse-drawn implement, what does he use that saved time for? To plow more fields. The trap is to use AI to produce more, faster, and then use that saved time to produce more, faster. It won't end because it's designed that way.

I've been reading and reflecting a lot on scarcity, abundance, and how it all works together in our lives. I think that's the direction that this newslette (not a typo, it's the diminutive affectionate term for newsletter) will go in, for a while anyway. The West Wind blows where it wills, and the skies are pretty clear right now. More tomorrow.