Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Technology changes. Practice changes with the technology. Nothing new here, but it requires me to change. Aargh. Sometimes I don’t like that.

There was a time when Xerox machines didn’t work as well as they do now. I guess I should call them copy machines instead of Xerox machines. There was a time when Xerox dominated the market so much that we… I digress. Times change.

Back in that time, editors put editing marks on manuscripts with blue pencils. The copy machines of the day didn’t “see” the faint blue and didn’t reproduce the blue edits on the copies. This failure to reproduce blue extended to blue ink and signatures.

Therefore, we signed documents in black ink only. Black ink was sure to be reproduced by the copy machines.

Along came high-quality, low-price 300 dot-per-inch and 600 dot-per-inch scanners and printers. It was easy to cut out a person’s signature in black ink, tape it onto a piece of paper, scan it, print it, and viola’. We had faked approval of a document.

Therefore, we signed documents in blue ink only. The scanners and printers worked only in black and white. Blue ink prevented fake signatures on documents.

Along came high-quality, low-price color scanners and printers. We could fake signatures on documents in any color.

Therefore, we did some clever digital signature with clever digital technologies with hash codes and such that kept unique things unique.

All these changes in technology and practice occurred in my time working in offices during one generation.

Now we have technology so that the first question anyone asks when they read what I write is, “Did you write that or did AI write that?”

Somehow I have to prove that you can’t blame AI for the gibberish that appears on the screen or page. It is all my fault.

All this to say, I have to change how I do things as technology changes. What am I do to with a box full of blue pencils? What color ink am I supposed to use this week? Do you want to see the drawers full of pens and pencils in my house? Someone help me.

Change. It happens.