The Making Of: What to Do About the Children

Behind-the-scenes look at how I produced this piece

I’ve had several people ask me about how I create some of the multi-media pieces here on Catch & Release so I’m offering up this behind-the-scenes look for paid subscribers. This post references the Flash Fiction piece I wrote entitled: “What to Do About the Children.”

The Writing

I didn’t set out to write this dystopic dialog between two A.I. overlords. In fact, I’m a bit saturated with this topic right now, but something I heard in the Hard Fork podcast while they were interviewing Ajeya Cotra, an A.I. researcher about her dismal view of our future, piqued my imagination. It was the notion that perhaps the machines won’t annihilate us, but they could take away our power and autonomy making us effectively into their children subject to their whims and direction.

From there it was off to the races. I pretty much wrote the entire piece in one of my morning writing sessions at my remote office in the middle of Piedmont Park down by the creek in a little patch of wilderness. It’s my happy place and I find ideas come to me pretty easily there in the cool of the morning.

My happy place for writing in the morning.