Chapter 1
The Return of Long Copy
Read Time:
3.5 Minutes (so not that long)
We don’t want you to think these pages are in some way disregarding or disparaging of short form copy, voice overs, social media memes or video presentations – all of which are part of our everyday.
On the other hand – the amount of information out there that is scrolled past, whizzes by, is overdone as repeated soundbites with no substance or explanation, means many people are bored by it all and stop listening.
But you are literate! You can read!
And even if you aren’t reading long copy every day you could join those of us who do and maybe gather more information, or even another perspective?
The human race has been telling stories for millions of years in numerous ways and formats.
Compared to the oral tradition of passing down histories through the generations, the written word is a relative newcomer.
But those unwritten stories through the millennia are all still there. They are part of our DNA, they are soaked into the Limbic region of our brains, we are born knowing them – so we aren’t surprised when we hear them again.
The majority of us (97% of both genders) have only been literate for a little over 150 years – in the UK that was driven by the Forster Act (Elementary Education Act 1870) – more of that coming up elsewhere if you’re interested.
Before that reading was quite an elitist pastime reserved for the fortunate, privileged and wealthy.
Fortunate, if you were from a poverty stricken or working class background but were lined up for an occupation requiring a level of literacy simply to do your job.
(Get you being all working class and able to read too).
Privileged, if you were the girl child of parents with liberal views about your place in society.
(Able to recite for Mama’s gentlefolk Callers).
Wealthy, if your family expected you to take over the running of a business or estate, or go into the church, military or government.
So now just about everyone is privileged enough to be able to read – it’s a shame not to use it.
Especially as Long Copy is what AI is looking for and there’s likely to be a lot more of it about.
YES! Finally the Software has got a little closer to catching up with the human mind!
But not quite; in fact not by a long way.
Throughout the technological revolutions, which probably started as recently as 1897 (Check out the AI Para Box for a fuller list), the frustration became everything the human mind, and the great thinkers of each generation came up with, couldn’t be fully expressed by mechanical engineers.
As you’ll read over in that section of the Deeper Dive pages, the word “Computer” had been around for at least 284 years before it was applied to a mechanical calculator.
The Rules of Club Football had been written 40 years before that calculator was invented – without even a word processor to clarify the offside rule (not really the offside rule – if you know you know).
Before that a Computer was a Human characteristic which became an occupation.
Lets fast forward this bit.
So machines, operating systems, automation of systems, eventually electronic machines, computer hardware and software meant computer scientists and programmers as recently as the 2010s knew the hardware was still slowing down the progress of software.
Then, very quickly, with advances in chip technology and then the Cloud, the software was set free!
The Artificial Intelligence that had been theorised about since WWII led to Machine Learning theories (Alan Turing “Can Machines Think”), and lots more “things” started to happen. Before a baptism at Stanford University gave Artificial Intelligence its eternal name in 1980.
What happened to that Fast Forward?
Sorry – here you go: Bang up to date and something strange is happening.
The developers, promoters and guardians of the almighty AI – HAVE RUN OUT OF IDEAS!
The Machines can’t teach themselves anymore.
Billions have been ploughed into researching Human characteristics and learning processes to find out how we work:
When we react to Foveal Views and contour bias.
Why we never look up.
What it is about colour that changes our moods and How the hell can human writers just sit down and write without Prompts or Queries sending us scurrying away to libraries to find the information we’re writing about?
And guess what?
Despite the Billions – Apple and Google, Microsoft and Robbie the Robot just don’t know.
So here we are, no longer stuffing keywords, no longer caring if we are SEO’ed up to the max – because it isn’t what AI is looking for.
Sure – we still do the SEO bits, the image alt text, the H-Tags from 1 to 100 (ok 1 to 4 maybe 5 at a push) but only for the “old” machines and search engines.
The Shiny New Search Engines are not looking for words but human made long copy that proves human Experience, Expertise, Trustworthiness and Literary Genius (alright I added the Genius, we all need self-motivation) and every day the need for original notplagiarised, not AI generated, long copy is increasing.
If you are using a web developer today who has been on a Google Garage course about AI and GSO last week – their outlook is already out of date. No, not Outlook, that’s always been out of date – let’s just say their forward vision may be stalled.
This is where Literary Marketing (you heard it here first) is literally teaching AI – because after all the hoo haw the machines still can’t keep up with the software and the software, the algorithms, the cookie monsters of the internet – still can’t keep up with the human mind.
Or make human cookies.
#proudtobehuman
