“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion… The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
To me, the quote above helps answer a very important question that all journalists, academics, and storytellers are now forced to grapple with: as Generative AI gets better at producing text instantaneously, why should we continue to invest in the craft of writing?
The answer, I believe, is that only us humans—as conscious subjective agents—can produce original ideas. Now, I can go on to argue for why this is the case scientifically and philosophically—but in short, if that’s not the case, then we’re all screwed. The day AI can think and act on its own will, our entire society will be upended. But for now, AI is limited to generating text based on the data it was trained on—which is all the writing that has come before us.
That means only us humans, as stupid and irrational and imperfect as we may be, have the unique ability to combine our intellectual backgrounds with our life experiences to create truly original ideas. If we let AI mass-produce junk flood our internet and our societal discourse—a future which economic incentives make very possible—we will be imprisoned by the ideas that have come before us as interpreted by the algorithm. If, instead, we take responsibility for exploring, advancing, and critiquing our ideologies, ideas, and intellectual traditions, we can then play an active role in shaping our society’s understanding of the world and ourselves.
I founded The College Contemporary in 2022, originally as an intercollegiate student newspaper where student writers across the country could collaborate together. The idea was that, through a nationwide publication, we could revitalize student journalism. Since then, the technological developments in our economy have forced us all to entirely re-imagine what the future of journalism looks like.
The College Contemporary offers one possible vision for this, at least at the student level: four times a year, we invite graduate & undergraduate students from across intellectual backgrounds to contribute essays to our readership. Contributors are given the time and support to push stylistic and intellectual boundaries to express artful perspectives on culture, politics, philosophy, and our other categories. Thanks to the generous backing of our sponsors, we then promote their work across a variety of digital channels—making sure that their ideas reach the widest possible audience.
This project is collaborative and a work in-progress, built entirely by part-time contributors, editors, and volunteers. If you have a question, a critique, or if you share our passion for the future of writing and want to get involved, email us collegecontemporary@gmail.com.
—Bobby Becker, founder & editor
