Writing Challenges
This week's Odd Prompts writing challenge at More Odds than Ends was from Fiona Grey: The eventual consequences of an offloaded cognitive burden were so visible it was nearly impossible to believe no one had predicted the outcome.
I looked up the concept of offloading cognitive burden (or load), and was surprised that the prompt made it sound like a bad thing, since all the articles I was reading were on how to better budget your cognitive capacity. So what sorts of situations could make offloading cognitive burdens result in negative consequences?
This led me to thinking in terms of cyberpunk, and of the use of various cognitive enhancements like direct-to-mind interfaces -- but how to get a story out of it? I fiddled with various ideas, but I was also busy with two other projects, plus needing to get ready to go to three conventions in three weeks, in a van that just had major repairs done on it, and right in the middle of a heatwave.
I ended up with a quick bit of dialog -- and given that "Levi" is the name of one of the other developers at Digital Dreams in "NPC's," I'm thinking this may well be from a Chaffee Artilect 'verse story, albeit earlier on, when Toni's still a lot more junior.
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The Load
“Looks like the usual self-appointed Moral Guardians have their tighty-whities all in a knot again.” Ray held up his tablet, open to an opinion piece on a website that tended towards technophobia.
Levi didn’t even bother to look up from his work. “What is it this time?”
“According to this writer, we’re handing too much of our mental work over to computers, so our minds are becoming weak and lazy, just like our bodies have been ever since the Industrial Revolution let us hand physical labor off to motors.”
Levi laughed. “Solomon was right. There really is nothing new under the sun."
“What?” Two or three voices chimed in.
“Way back in Ancient Greece, people were complaining about how the adoption of writing eroded memorization, to the detriment of poetry.”
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Even if I never actually insert this passage into any published story, it was fun playing with the situation.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
In the meantime, keep writing.
I looked up the concept of offloading cognitive burden (or load), and was surprised that the prompt made it sound like a bad thing, since all the articles I was reading were on how to better budget your cognitive capacity. So what sorts of situations could make offloading cognitive burdens result in negative consequences?
This led me to thinking in terms of cyberpunk, and of the use of various cognitive enhancements like direct-to-mind interfaces -- but how to get a story out of it? I fiddled with various ideas, but I was also busy with two other projects, plus needing to get ready to go to three conventions in three weeks, in a van that just had major repairs done on it, and right in the middle of a heatwave.
I ended up with a quick bit of dialog -- and given that "Levi" is the name of one of the other developers at Digital Dreams in "NPC's," I'm thinking this may well be from a Chaffee Artilect 'verse story, albeit earlier on, when Toni's still a lot more junior.
===========================================================================================
The Load
“Looks like the usual self-appointed Moral Guardians have their tighty-whities all in a knot again.” Ray held up his tablet, open to an opinion piece on a website that tended towards technophobia.
Levi didn’t even bother to look up from his work. “What is it this time?”
“According to this writer, we’re handing too much of our mental work over to computers, so our minds are becoming weak and lazy, just like our bodies have been ever since the Industrial Revolution let us hand physical labor off to motors.”
Levi laughed. “Solomon was right. There really is nothing new under the sun."
“What?” Two or three voices chimed in.
“Way back in Ancient Greece, people were complaining about how the adoption of writing eroded memorization, to the detriment of poetry.”
==========================================================================================
Even if I never actually insert this passage into any published story, it was fun playing with the situation.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
In the meantime, keep writing.