Does Writing have a Future?

MKV/DigiTrans higher seminar with professor David J. Gunkel, Chair of the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University, USA.

This presentation argues that large language models (LLMs) and generative AI signify not the end of writing but the terminal limits of a particular conceptualization of writing that has been called logocentrism. Toward this end, the analysis will

1) review three fundamental elements of logocentric metaphysics and the long shadow that this way of thinking has cast over the conceptualization and critique of LLMs and generative AI;
2) release a deconstruction of this standard operating procedure that interrupts influential and often-unquestioned assumptions about authorship, truth, and semiology; and
3) formulate the terms and conditions of an alternative way to think and write about LLMs and generative AI that escape the conceptual grasp of logocentrism and its hegemony.

In doing so, the paper will argue that writing indeed has a future but only if we reconceptualize how we think about writing and write about thinking.

David J. Gunkel
Distinguished Research Professor
Distinguished Teaching Professor
Chair – Department of Communication
Northern Illinois University (USA)

The seminar is arranged by the Department of Media and Communication Studies (MKV) in collaboration with the Digital Transformations Research Platform.