Writing With and Against the Machine
TL;DR
It is argued that preserving the embodied, deliberative, and human dimensions of writing, particularly in autoethnography, is essential for maintaining authorship, selfhood, and the relational trust between writer and reader.
Abstract
This essay explores the intersections of autoethnography, creativity, and artificial intelligence through a series of reflective vignettes grounded in both embodied practice and technological engagement. Drawing from work in a high-tech makerspace, teaching, and artistic practice, the author examines the tensions between slow, tangible modes of inquiry, such as handwriting, glasswork, and maker-centered processes and the rapid, adaptive, and sometimes unsettling affordances of AI. The essay introduces the concept of critical intimacy, a reflective posture for engaging with technology that emphasizes awareness, ethical discernment, and personal agency. Through examples ranging from adaptive AI in virtual reality and video games to generative text systems, it interrogates how AI reshapes authorship, narrative authority, and the processes of creative and scholarly labor. The essay invites readers to consider AI not as a neutral tool or a substitute for human experience, but as a complex collaborator whose engagement requires mindfulness, reflection, and intentionality. Ultimately, it argues that preserving the embodied, deliberative, and human dimensions of writing, particularly in autoethnography, is essential for maintaining authorship, selfhood, and the relational trust between writer and reader.