When Paper Was Precious
There was a time when writing was sacred.
When paper cost a month’s wage, and you wrote with a quill dipped in ink.
No backspace. No undo.
Every word had weight because it was expensive, deliberate, and rare.
Back then, to write something meant it mattered.
Thinking was required. Precision was demanded.
Now?
Notebooks are cheap. Pens are disposable. Thoughts are jotted, posted, discarded.
And because the cost of writing fell to zero… so did its perceived value.
The same thing happened with communication.
Once, you needed a printing press, a publisher, a broadcast tower.
Now? Anyone can send their thoughts to the world in seconds.
And they do—endlessly, meaninglessly.
Tweets. Posts. Comments. Noise.
When everything can be said, nothing is heard.
And now, I worry we’re watching the same thing happen to thinking itself.
AI writes. Algorithms decide.
We skim instead of read. React instead of reflect.
We’re outsourcing thought—and forgetting that thinking is the precursor to all meaningful action.
Think of what we lose if we don’t protect thinking:
We lose judgment.
We lose memory.
We lose the ability to choose with intention.
And when a society stops thinking, it stops progressing.
So maybe the goal isn’t to write more. Or post more.
Maybe it’s to think more.
To protect the freedom to think.
And to choose, with intention, what we give our words