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Right then, let’s have a bit of a natter, shall we? About things shifting. About the ground under your feet not being quite as solid as it once was. Been in this game more years than I care to count, seen more fads come and go than a politician changes their mind, but what’s bubbling up now? Different. Proper different.
You spend a lifetime, a good twenty odd years, figuring out how to get words onto a screen, how to make ’em stick in someone’s head. You learn the rhythm, the flow, the bit that makes ’em click or scroll. And then, well, the whole shebang gets turned on its head. It’s like being told your prize-winning whippet needs to learn to fly. Bit of a shocker, that.
The Dust Up in the Digital Yard
Hear all the chatter, don’t you? About AI, about automation. Heard it since the nineties, mind. Always a new bogeyman, always a new shiny thing. “This’ll change everything!” they’d crow, usually from a stage with a fancy slide deck. Most times, it’s just a new flavour of the same old ice cream. But this? This feels different. It’s not just a tweak here or there. It’s a complete tearing up of the old rulebook, then setting it on fire, and then building a new one out of… well, bits and bobs you don’t quite recognise. That’s why I reckon you’re next.
I’ve seen so many outfits, big ones, small ones, acting like ostriches with their heads in the sand, hoping it all just blows over. Bless their cotton socks. It ain’t blowing over, sunshine. This thing? It’s a gale. A proper squall. And it ain’t just the entry-level folks, neither. That’s the part that’ll keep you up at night, if you let it. Used to be you could rely on the years, the grey hairs, the wisdom. Now, wisdom’s got a impact/" title="Learning about the exact same malcom x beliefs and his impact">learning curve, and it’s steep.
Who’s Feeling the Heat Now?
Look at the big players. The ones who built the frameworks, the ones who sold you the shiny tools for years. They’re all scrambling, aren’t they? Used to be you’d look at a company like HubSpot, king of the inbound game, and think they were unshakeable. All their templates, their flows, their automation. They’re still there, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not sitting pretty. They’re pushing updates faster than a politician on a promise, trying to keep up with the new kids on the block. Same with Salesforce, building their cloud castles. They’ve got so much data, so many customers, but the whisper is, what happens when someone builds something smarter, faster, and ten times cheaper that just plugs right in? They know it, you see the twitch in their eye.
Funny old thing, I remember back when everyone was obsessed with keyword density. Stuffing keywords in ’til the article read like a drunk parrot. Then it was natural language. Then it was search intent. Always something new, always a guru popping up saying they had the secret sauce. Most of it was just good sense, packaged up. Now, a machine can figure out search intent quicker than you can brew a cuppa. That’s a game changer, ain’t it? What’s your unique selling point, then? You can string a sentence together? Plenty can do that now.
The Great Content Shuffle
So, you write, right? Or you edit. You craft stories, you put out newsletters. Used to be a decent living in it, for some anyway. Now, you ask yourself, “Is my job safe?” Well, is it? You tell me. I see articles churned out by these newfangled systems, not always perfect, mind, a bit bland, a bit… soulless. But give ’em a bit of a polish, a sprinkle of human fairy dust, and they’re good to go. Saves a fortune on junior writers, doesn’t it?
The Agencies, Bless ‘Em
I’ve got mates in these massive advertising and PR outfits. The WPPs of the world, the Omnicoms, Publicis Groupe. They’re all talking a big game about “integrating AI” and “leveraging new capabilities.” What they really mean is, they’re laying off folk. Or they’re moving them to different departments, away from the actual content creation bit. Because a machine can whip up five social media posts, a blog outline, and a few email subject lines in the time it takes old Brenda from accounting to find her spectacles. It’s a fact. And these big agencies, they live and die by profit margins, don’t they? If they can do it cheaper, they will. Simple as that.
What if you’re the one who always knew the client’s favourite type of biscuit, or who always remembered their kid’s name? Does that count for anything when a bot can draft the entire campaign strategy? It’s a proper quandary, that. I guess some human touch always matters. Or does it? Ask yourself that when the next round of cuts comes.
The Big Tech Boys and Girls
They’re the ones pushing the buttons, aren’t they? The likes of OpenAI, with their GPT models, and google, who’ve been fiddling with this for years, quietly in the background. They’re building the engines. And they’re getting better, faster, scarier. What was a novelty last year is a standard tool this year. And what’s a standard tool this year? Well, you’re next to learn how to use it, or someone else will. That’s the cold hard truth of it.
Remember when you had to have a degree in coding to build a website? Now, anyone with a bit of gumption and a few quid can whip one up. Same thing’s happening with content. The barriers are falling. That means more competition, not less. And cheaper prices, because someone’s always willing to do it for less. Always.
The Media Mess
Look at the news outfits. The old guard like The New York Times are trying to figure out how to use this stuff without making their readers think they’re getting fed robot news. It’s a fine line. Then you’ve got the newer outfits, the digital natives like Semafor or Axios, who built their whole model around brevity and punchy delivery. They’re probably better set up for this, because they were already stripping things back. But even they’re watching over their shoulder, wondering when some kid in a garage figures out how to automate the summary of every news story on the planet.
“What should I learn, then?” someone asked me the other day. I just looked at him. Learn to be a human, mate. Learn to do the bit the machine can’t. Yet. That’s the real trick. Or just get good at prompt engineering, whatever the hell that means this week.
The Human Angle, If There Is One
So, what’s left for us, the flesh and blood? The bits that machines don’t get, not really. Nuance. Humour. Irony. Sarcasm. The ability to tell when someone’s spinning you a yarn. That gut feeling you get about a story. The ability to truly connect with another person, not just process their query. That’s where I reckon the value is. For now.
It’s about being able to tell a story that hits you in the gut, that makes you laugh out loud or shed a tear. Not because it’s optimised for SEO, but because it’s human. It’s messy, it’s contradictory. It’s got that bit of madness that the logical circuits can’t quite replicate. They can spit out facts, sure. They can even mimic style. But can they feel the frustration when your favourite football team loses? Can they feel the sheer joy of a perfect sentence? Nah. Not yet anyway.
The Experience Conundrum
“Does old experience matter?” Someone else asked me that. My gut reaction? Yes. And no. The old ways of doing things, the specific tools and processes? They might be dead. Pushing a stone wheel when everyone else has got tyres. But the lessons from those years, the understanding of how people think, what makes them tick, what makes them trust you, that stuff? That doesn’t go away. That’s the real value. Knowing when the emperor’s got no clothes on. Knowing when someone’s trying to pull the wool over your eyes. That’s honed over years, not something you download.
But you can’t just rest on it, can you? You’ve got to keep learning. It’s a treadmill, this job. Always has been. Just now the speed dial’s been cranked up to ‘ludicrous’. If you don’t keep moving, well, you’re next to fall off. Simple as that. What if you just ignore it, pretend it’s not happening? Good luck with that. Seen plenty try it. They’re usually the ones wondering why their phone’s stopped ringing.
The Future’s a Muddle, Always Was
No one’s got a crystal ball, do they? Not really. All these tech evangelists, they’re just guessing too. Some of it sticks, most of it turns out to be hot air. But the underlying shift, that’s real. The ability for machines to do a lot of the grunt work, the repetitive stuff, even some of the ‘creative’ stuff, that’s here. It’s not going anywhere.
What it means for you, for me, for anyone working with words or ideas online? It means you have to be quicker. You have to be smarter. You have to find the bit that only you can do. Or figure out how to make these new tools your bitch, instead of the other way around. It’s an interesting time. Maddening, sometimes. But interesting.
“What’s the one skill I need?” someone asked me a few weeks back. I told him, “Learning how to learn. And a thick skin. You’re going to need both.”
So, that’s my two cents worth. Take it or leave it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. The world keeps turning, and sometimes it doesn’t wait for you to catch up.
