I hope this email finds you

a love letter to digital tactility.

It’s midday on a Thursday and I’m spending my lunch break sitting through a corporate lunch and learn. Up on the screen is an AI generated anthropomorphised basketball in an art style i can’t quite put a finger on. It’s soulless beady eyes stare right through me.

It’s Friday morning and I get an email answer back from someone. Their answer to “What’s a part of your job you enjoy?” is littered with em dashes and has an artificial aftertaste like a sugar free drink.

I get looked at like I’m crazy for suggesting that something may be generated with copilot. They tell me it isn’t. they swear it. em dashes are just ‘grammatically correct’. I ask the person who needed me to explain how to share something on teams how they type an em dash on the keyboard. I’m apparently the bad guy.

I wish I could shake them by the shoulders and tell them they don’t need to be perfect! I am not quizzing you! There is no wrong answer! I am desperately trying to connect with you, the human being, amongst a mess of corporate jargon and secret rules that no one writes down that I’m just supposed to know. I asked you the question because I want to know how YOUR brain works. I am curious about YOU.

Maybe its because I’m a digital native, and I’ve grown up in two worlds where digital communication is second nature. But I think the way people type is just as beautiful as hand writing. the way that my best friend accidentally types ‘atfer’ or ‘lateeerrr” lets me know that she’s having a good night. The number of emojis you use per message lets me know how anxious you are to convey your tone. The full stop mum used in every text (that used to make me think I was in trouble) has been slowly replaced with Xx’s as we teach her how to tell us she loves us through the phone.

I think the most beautiful thing about the way we write texts and emails, the messy commas that aren’t correct, the typos, the grammatical faux pas - is that they reflect the voice in our head. When we speak out loud we use our outside voice. Its spoken as the person we project. the person we spent years building. But when we text or email each other we write as we think. The words don’t pass through quite the same filter.

Our throat doesn’t tighten and our chest doesn’t feel heavy with the anxiousness that we might say something wrong. Words don’t feel awkward as they pass through our teeth. Our tongue doesn’t stumble on words we excitedly hurry to say.

Our digital vernacular may be through glass screens and circuit boards, through cell towers and across oceans, but it still has a fingerprint that is uniquely ours. Everyone has their own voice.

With the influx of copilot custard I am mourning this digital tactility. I call it custard because the idea of it is always better than the actual output. and don’t get me wrong, custard has a place! A bowl of apple crumble can be greatly improved by some custard, but if someone offered me just a bowl of custard I’d politely decline.

I think copilot can be helpful for polishing, tone, and finishing touches. I’d be a big old fibber if i didn’t admit that my small army of “tone of voice” agents (each for different “personas”) gets me through the work day sometimes. It is as it says it is, a good copilot - but if the captain is capable and healthy I would certainly question why the copilot is doing the entire takeoff, flight, and landing process on their own.

The most common office justifications of copilot use for things like answering my questions about you the human being, is that more often than not these people are Very Important and Very Busy. My work can be seen as ‘fluffy’ ‘non-essential’ and my favourite one, not “moving the needle”.

I see my job as corporate pit crew. No, I’m not the F1 driver, or any of the bits in or on the car. I’m the person who sticks their head into the car window and goes “hey -you good?”. I didn’t make the car go any faster. But I did give the driver a tenth of a second to be a human being. sometimes that’s enough to get them round the next lap.

Corporate life inherently feels icky to a lot of people. Sitting in a room listening to Q3 projections and maximising shareholder value can only get you so far before you fully lose sight of why you go to work.

Email subject lines littered with irony, a sarcastic smiley face, and a snide remark about loving what outlook has done with the place are what keep the system from total rebellion and collapse.

My hope lies in the core fact that we are all human beings at the end of the day. We invented the mop and it never stopped us being messy. We are beautiful creates who will bleed our humanness into everything we do. I dream that we are simply living in the inbetween, and soon we will find a balance. The new toy won’t be so shiny because we’ve mastered the skill in it.

A lot of this boils down to society’s increasing undervaluation of the arts. You might not be able to tell what is copilot writing or not Barbara, but I can. I have the AI soap gene, because I have tasted the sweetness of poetry, the dryness of critique, the saltiness of my tears after a good book, and the zingy tartness of an electric song that energises my bones and makes me want to dance. AI writing at current is a freezer burned ready meal. It’ll do. But it will never replace a chef.

So no, this email didn’t find me well. I no longer get to see the medium in the message. Your emails aren’t fingerprints anymore. It feels like you’ve offered me a laminated tissue. It might be perfect, but it doesn’t do it’s job like it used to. It doesn’t tell me anything about you, and for that I am heartbroken.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Warm regards,

Becks.