Welcome to the new home of human words project! Things got too expensive on the original platform, so it now lives here on good ol’ WordPress.

Joanna and I conceived hwp in the summer of 2023 as a response to the appearance of ChatGPT on the education landscape. We had to find a way to talk back to the startling idea that using words was drudgery to be outsourced, whenever possible: that if a computer could make the words of our lives, then it probably should.

This notion is more cynical and terrifying now than it was two years ago. Nothing we have learned in that time–and we have learned a lot–has changed our minds about the crisis that generative AI presents. Not just to the humanities, but to being human itself.

I am working on bringing over the great stuff that so many of our friends shared about what human words mean to them on the old site, and will be adding some new stuff too. Thank you! Watch this space!

In the meantime: this is your call to use your words, share your words, and love your words! Copy this image and slap it on your web sites, feeds, email footers, and the rest of your digital life to affirm that YOU made what you are putting out there, not a computer algorithm. All the cool kids are doing it!

Here it is again, with no background, I think. Computers are hard.

human words project is also the working title of my forthcoming book, to be published December 2025 through Loose Dog Press.

It will explore how the rediscovery of my antique manual typewriter during COVID set off a chain reaction that utterly transformed my relationship to my words, my world, and my teaching.

Context is everything. And the humble typewriter–the most commonplace of tools in homes, schools, and workplaces for most of the last century–has been remixed in the digital age as a portal through which we can rediscover our own places in an increasingly virtual world.

Consider: everything that we used to hate about typewriters…now makes them precious.

In an age when perfect, machine words are effortless to make, and therefore worthless…making your own imperfect, human words with your own effort, and sharing them exactly how and with whom you want to, becomes precious.

In an age when our writing technologies also bring us news, music, movies, arguments, and everything else…sitting down to a device that only exists to make the words you ask it to becomes precious.

In an age when our laptops and phones are engineered to fragment our attention and pull us into doing everything else but writing…spending time with a device that cannot, will not, do anything other than write becomes precious.

In an age when generative AI can create pages of words in seconds…taking an hour to write one page by yourself becomes precious.

In an age when anything we share online is instantly available around the world…having complete control over what you have written becomes precious.

In an age when autocomplete can make us all sound just like each other…finding your own voice on a blank page is precious.

What does it mean to live with the power of your human words, every day?

What does it mean to teach so that your students can find the power of their human words, every day?

What can our human words help us understand about about our joy, and our weariness, in our teaching lives?

This is what the book is about! I cannot wait to share it with you. More to come!