the Commodification of Writing: Your Awesome Title Here

With the function and style of writing constantly changing, many are asking where exactly writing will  end up in the near future. Will it continue to evolve in medium? Will it even be used at all? To answer questions like these, it is impossible to know for sure, so to make the most educated prediction possible, it would make sense to analyze the trends of similar situations. Put frankly, we live in a capitalist society full of consumers. There are statistics to show what kinds of items sell the most, but leisure is among the biggest reasons people spend money. This being said, writing has made a rather noticeable transformation from a cultural form of communication, to product. Perhaps this is an inevitable circumstance, as much of what originates or finds it's way to America eventually becomes mass produced and simplified to better suit the daily lives of american citizens. If this is the case, then it is safe to assume that writing, - more specifically electronic writing- will evolve based on how it is forced by consumers and advertisers to adapt to the trends of a typical modern life, essentially leading to a decrease in the popular access of conventional writing. 

To examine this theory further, one must consider the economy from the perspective of an branding advertiser. In this case, advertisers will want to market products that are easy to use, because consumers will buy what can make their lives easier. Although this may come across as somewhat of a paradox – the idea of people working to earn money in order to buy products of leisure – it is a commonly practiced lifestyle, and there is actually a term to define this way of life. Hedonism is defined as “devotion to pleasure as a way of life,” which is related closely with that of consumerism. If the fate of writing is to be what is the most easy or pleasurable for people to use, than why would anyone refrain from making writing related products that ease the way in which writing is conducted? 

In actuality this has already been done to a certain degree. The evidence is the program in which this essay is being typed on, and the variety of applications made available by software companies; every product advertises with the release of each new version, a convenient way to make writing less of a hassle. Anyone who can spell can write sentences out by hand. But with the creation of the typewriter, and then computers, modes of writing have been been improved by means of speed, efficiency, and ease of use. Electronic writing is physically and mentally less demanding than handwritten work, but it comes at a price that people are none the less willing to pay. Therefore, the destiny of writing has observably begun follow a hedonistic trend, as well as one that exists as a commodity. 

Aside from writing itself, one large piece of evidence that points to writing morphing into a commodity, is the form that art and music has taken on a commercial level. Originally, art and music was only able to be created by those who put in the time and effort to learn about each respective craft. However, with the rise of electronics and technology, art and music as been made accessible to even those who artistically and musically ignorant. This stems from the formation of “templates,” or pre-made compositions made by professional artists specifically for the average consumer. With templates, the consumer of the product needs no form of training what so ever in music, art, or whatever their they're looking to suit their needs. Instead, they simply buy a pre-made design from a trained artist, (or musician or designer etc.) and modify a minimum amount of information to “personalize” their copy. If the user wants a well designed flier for their event, they choose a template an modify the text. 

More recently in terms of music, programs like Apple Inc.'s Garageband give users the option to create an entire song based solely on the choosing of instruments desired in the creation of the tune by the user. From there, the program generates everything else needed to make a perfectly comprehensible semi-original piece of music. Of course, just like with artistic templates, musical templates are based off of real riffs created by professional musicians, and then arranged electronically by the program, to the users liking. The user literally contributes nothing to the song besides the choice of instrumentation and money to purchase the product, yet they are still given credit for it's creation. The distribution and popular use of these templates greatly reduces the amount of creativity involved to a large extent, because the original artist is the only one creating the piece. The user only buys it and alters it slightly, which completely erases the need to learn how to create their own ideas. This begs the question, why wouldn't electronic writing follow this same course? 

It seems to make perfect sense that in the near future writing programs will be enhanced so far as to virtually write essays for people. In theory, these writing templates would follow the same guidelines as those created for art and music. A group of educated writers collaborate to produce a system that essentially takes snippets of their writings, and arranges them into a sort of cohesive Mad-Lib (link). They create a collection of their own phrases, sayings, sentences, and transitions, along with the coding of language fundamentals. Then, the user fills in a brief summary of variable questions related to their topic, i.e. topic, sources, main idea, and length, plus any additional sentences the user feels like adding. Then from there the computer devises for the most part an essay based off of the imputed information. Lastly, the user fills in any blanks (such as any missing nouns, verbs or adjectives left out by the computer) with their own. And in 15 minutes the user has a three page, literary scholar-quality essay. 

If this seems like an implausible idea, consider that just because a template like this could exist doesn't necessarily mean that it is the only option people would use. Certainly some people could and would type their own essays entirely by themselves, just as people in current day still major in art and music. But the majority of society consists of consumers, and they're the ones that are willing to buy template programs to do their work for them, meaning a smaller and smaller margin of people actually concerned or interested in continuing the art of original writing. Which leads to writing's biggest threat-

to be continued...