Early this year, I started conducting some book interviews, where I’ve talked with recently published authors about their writing process. As an author myself, these interviews turned out to be incredibly revealing, where many similar issues arose for all writers I’ve talked to.
However, the most striking insight was how the act of writing helped them think. By writing, their ideas became clearer and more objective. Their ideas almost gain a life on their own, taking an unexpected shape that they couldn’t have initially predicted. In other words, their ideas evolve with them through writing.
Even though our school systems are basically a text-based education one, writing is kind of a new “knowledge skill” in human history, what Professor Lars Sauerberg called Gutenberg Parenthesis.
In this metaphor, on the other side of the parenthesis, before Gutenberg invented the printing press, stories and information were passed along mouth-to-mouth by family, friends, travelers, town criers, and balladeers. Knowledge and memory were collective, collaborative, and often performative, through songs and poetry.
One reason was that the business of books was expensive and slow, relying on scribes who produced manuscripts (i.e., written by hand) one at a time. With Gutenberg’s press, the printed book offered a way for “knowledge came to be bound in covers, with a beginning and an end,” explains Jeff Jarvis. According to him, “our cognition of the world became linear; the line became the organizing principle of life.” Society moved from collective knowledge of the masses to the credibility of the expert. Also, the printed book gave birth to a new language, such as the author as authority, and the content as that fills the container (the book).
Another unexpected consequence of the printing press, the first industrial machine, was the cost reduction in paper production, which made it significantly cheaper. While the printed book offered a more “official” place to materialize thoughts and ideas, the notebook (an empty book, so to speak) provided people with a space to record their thoughts, observations, and reflections.
Note-taking itself was not a new human practice. However, the notebook emerged as a practical innovation among Italian accountants, who adapted paper ledgers for meticulous record-keeping. It was only after the sixteenth century that notebooks became standardized and widely adopted for educational, social, and professional purposes. This newfound accessibility to note-taking proved revolutionary, profoundly transforming the way humans think. Obviously, writing books was not for everyone, but with the notebook, more individuals gained the ability to externalize their thinking, organize their ideas, and, in turn, keep track and structure their thoughts.
Needless to say, modern technology radically transformed this practice, and note-taking doesn’t need to be about pen and paper anymore. For example, I use note-taking apps, such as Google Keep and Word, to write down ideas and thoughts. Most of what I write in my blog and newsletter came from these notes, actually. Technology can help in this regard, but only if we use it wisely and don’t let it distract us from what really matters.
As Cal Newport argued, there is some magic in retreating alone to think armed with only a paper notebook, but with the growing use of chatbots, this may become more difficult. “The problem facing knowledge work in our current moment is not that we’re lacking sufficiently powerful technologies,” explains Newport, “It’s instead that we’re already distracted by so many digital tools that there’s no time left to really open the throttle on our brains.” Following this perspective, in an age of AI and digital overload, the humble notebook may become more relevant than ever.
Now, the internet may have brought Gutenberg’s Parenthesis to a close, returning us to an era where knowledge circulates freely, transformed by every hand (or technological tool) it passes through. In this new landscape, the once-solid notions of authorship and ownership have begun to dissolve, and AI might well deliver the final blow.
However, there’s a world of difference between merely “producing text” and genuinely writing; only the latter invites us to think, to wrestle with ideas until they take shape. Of course, you don’t need to write a book to experience that, but chatbots alone may not get you there either. If you want to think deeply, try this old tool called a notebook instead.