(00:00): Hello and welcome to the Merlin English afterthought. Throughout this series, we'll be looking back at previous audio blogs and discussing them in a bit more detail.

(00:11): Today, we'll be looking at episode number two, the advanced audio blog post titled Writing in the Age of Technology. Again then, I am here at www.merlinenglish.co.uk/members.

(00:27): Where we have this episode's full webpage along with the transcription and additional resources. To begin though, I'm going to just look at the key takeaways and the opening line of the introduction.

(00:41): We have writing has been transcribed. Transformed by technology. Now for me, I think that this is a true statement, of course.

(00:50): And I think that we can really replace writing here with any creative endeavour. We could say music has been transformed.

(01:00): Photography has been transformed. Art has been transformed. And I think that this is just a statement to how ubiquitous the impact of technology has been.

(01:13): I guess for some people they see this as progress. They see this as a good thing for others. Perhaps they have a slightly more pessimistic view.

(01:24): Maybe they see this as regressing instead. So below we do talk about some benefits and some challenges or some drawbacks of the digital age.

(01:39): The first thing we mention here we say technology has made research, drafting, editing and publishing easier. For me, I was born in the year 1998, so I really cannot remember a time where we didn't have a computer.

(02:00): I believe we got the internet installed in our house when I was in yeah, two maybe. And while this may sound a bit silly to someone a bit older, I really cannot imagine a world without the internet or without technology.

(02:19): We mentioned here research, I don't know how you would research something, I guess you know you'd go to the library, you'd read an encyclopedia or something, I get that.

(02:31): But this would take a whole morning or a whole day and you're still not guaranteed to find the answer of what you're looking for.

(02:42): Compare that to just googling, you're searching something on the internet, I kind of comprehend how anything got done at any reasonable pace pre-internet.

(02:52): It's something which is, I cannot get my head around it. This is the same with drafting, with editing, you know, when you're on Microsoft Word, you can write something, delete it, you can add it later, move it around and of course with pen and pen.

(03:09): This is something which would take a lot longer and would definitely not be anywhere near as simple.

(03:18): Below them we mention some websites. And throughout this whole post we talk about some digital tools. We talk about different websites. However, websites for publishing and supporting independent writers, I think that these websites are very, very important.

(03:36): The two that I mentioned in the post are Medium and Substack. So these are very similar applications or very similar sites.

(03:46): And these essentially are websites where you can directly support, a journalist, where you can directly support an author. I think over the past two or three years we have seen that's, you know, this freedom of speech which we thought we had especially in the media and on TV does not exist.

(04:21): You know, we've seen many people be banned and be de-platformed and I think that places like Medium and Substack where you can go and directly support somebody who is perhaps saying something that, you know, mainstream science or the mainstream media perhaps does not agree with,

(04:30): I think that is important for us to protect that and support that. So I'd highly recommend checking out either of these websites, find some, authors or some journalists in a field you're interested in and go and support some of the creators over there.

(04:47): I think that this is very important for society, for free speech. I think this is a very useful and important platform.

(04:58): If we go back to the website then here we can see, ah, we also talk about the challenges and the difficulties of writing in the digital age.

(05:09): We talk about social media which of course has its pros and cons. We also talk about the abundance of online content.

(05:19): You know, with the internet really publishing became democratised. It went from somebody having to go through a publisher, through an agency, through a company, to having access to a computer and to the internet.

(05:39): This allows of anybody to become an author, to become a musician. And again, this is something which I think has many, many benefits.

(05:49): One of the big downsides is that everybody just does it because they can. Why not? This of course means it is very difficult for people to stand out, for people to be, seen or heard.

(06:04): So yeah. Finally there then we talk about digital piracy and copyright infringement. I was recently speaking to a photographer and the, Conversation of copyright came up and he specifically talked about the impact of AI and AI art and the impact that this is having on photographers, on graphic designers.

(06:32): He said that of course for specific images, these are trademarked or copy you know, they have copyright protection. However, the style of that artist or the style of that photographer is something that you cannot protect.

(06:52): So this has caused people to go onto these AI art websites, you can type in a painting that you might like, you can type it in the style of your favourite painter, and all of a sudden you have a unique one of one copy. And yeah, this is something which is difficult for artists, but also difficult for

(07:14): lawmakers. It's very difficult to write a law to protect these things, and I guess this is just something that just comes along with technology.

(07:25): There's always going to be a cat and mouse there, a cat and mouse game there between sorts of legislation and people using it.

(07:36): If we go down then to the tools that we mention. We include a couple of websites here, some of course you will have heard of, others maybe not.

(07:48): We speak about Microsoft Word, Google Docs, again most people are familiar with these. We also mention a website here called Scrivener.

(07:59): So Scrivener is a very popular app for writers, it's a very popular app for academics as well. And Scrivener is like Microsoft Word.

(08:11): But a lot better. The thing with Microsoft Word, it's a bit limited to just writing. There is not really many places to put your sources, to gather information or put notes.

(08:24): Scrivener allows you to do that. I'm not going to go into a tutorial on Scrivener. There are many, many tutorials on YouTube and you can look into that if you would like.

(08:36): Scrivener I believe is, yeah, only £50 and this is something you pay once and then you have it for, life and yeah, this is a very popular website for many people.

(08:48): It looks sort of like this and yeah, you can really format your planning, you can have everything included and it's something which allows you to keep all of your, documents up in one place and organised.

(09:03): If we go back then to the next section here then, we talk about online research tools. We mentioned Google Scholar, also JSTOR.

(09:16): So these are particularly useful if you are in university, if you are in academic, if you're looking for you know, journals, you're looking for sources.

(09:27): This is a great great, great place. You'll see there that I searched for a kangaroo before. We can type in rarely anything.

(09:37): We can type in a tree and we can see that there are just hundreds and hundreds of journal articles, of paper.

(09:46): And this is really a great place to find information. For most students, you will get this for free, at least in the UK, if you register with your university account.

(09:59): I believe if you're not a student, you can do that. You can get a certain amount, I think it's like a hundred journals or articles for free, but then I think you do have to pay a little bit.

(10:10): I'm not too sure how much that costs though. So we have that then. We have Scrivener. We have JSTORP as well, a distraction blocking tool, a very useful app which I have used before is the app called Cold Turkey.

(10:27): So Cold Turkey, again, is, you have to pay for this. However, it is just one flat rate. You pay 30 pounds and once you have it, you have it forever.

(10:39): There's no subscriptions, which is quite useful and this website essentially lets you block certain notifications, certain apps, certain websites and once you've set it, once you've blocked it, you basically cannot get back onto it, you cannot access that again until your set time is up.

(10:59): So if you're prone to procrastination, if you're prone to distractions, I'd highly recommend this. App as well is something that is yeah, very useful.

(11:12): Okay, then. So going down to the last one, then we just have some best practices, some best tips. These are tips which you've probably heard before.

(11:23): Tips you probably know are important. Things like staying organised with your digital workspace, having files. Really when we're trying to apply ourselves, we only have a set amount of energy.

(11:38): We only have a set amount of energy. We only have a set amount of brain power. If we're spending half an hour or an hour a day trying to get the right documents, going through files, trying to rearrange things, trying to look for past pieces of work, you're already taking away time from, you know, the actual project of the task.

(12:00): and staying organised, having a clean digital environment. I think it's something very, very important saying deadlines is very, very important.

(12:09): Psychology has proven the importance of deadlines and how we are likely to just push things back and push things back until we actually have to do it.

(12:22): Taking regular breaks, of course, this goes without saying, walking around. For just five minutes is going to be something which completely allowed you to come back in a much clearer headspace.

(12:36): So that is briefly episode number two of the audio blog, writing in the age of technology. I thought that I would just share some of the websites, some of the tools and the apps that I personally use.

(13:04): I hope that this has been some help. I hope that you have learned something and perhaps can check some of these things out for yourself.

(13:12): Thank you very much for watching until the end and I will hopefully see you soon.