Writing may fork in the AI era: conversational clay vs machine-readable marble
jonippolito · x · 2026-10-09
Responding to the firestorm around Joe Cruz's late-September NYT op-ed "Writing Isn't as Important as We Think," media scholar Jon Ippolito offers a third take.
- Cruz invoked Plato's Phaedrus to argue speech reveals real thinking and improvisation; Natalie Wexler countered that writing's difficulty is precisely its power—precision and clarity.
- Ippolito says both camps miss the point: each medium has distinct strengths—emotional register and body language for speech, exactness for prose.
- He predicts AI will fork writing into two media: conversational media that are spontaneous and malleable like clay, and machine-readable media that are precise like marble.
- The upshot for educators: don't pick a side—cultivate both literacies.
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