Our Travel Writing: AI & The Future
By Sue Davies and Regina Ang
After a four-year COVID and inspiration break, we’ve decided to resume travel writing on our website. During COVID, we thought about abandoning the site altogether. At the same time, the need for human connections across manmade borders seems more important than ever. We use this site to uncover/discover how to travel and write about travel with an eye on sustainable, ethical, and humanistic travel.
AI’s Impact on Travel Writing
We believe that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already changing travel writing. This impact will increase over the next decades. No, AI will not replace writers. It will, however, change the ways we write. Some articles will not be needed. As travel writers, we can explore new ways of writing about travel. We see that as liberating. AI can never replace our personal experiences and observations. It can, however, write a piece about the top 10 places to visit in a particular place. Of course, AI generates generic text that often contains many errors. But AI cannot effectively write an article about the experience of being at a Bhutan festival or the first time we experienced a hawker center in Singapore.
Non-Knowing Writing
We find some travel writing to be disingenuous. Going somewhere for a week and writing an article as an expert (entitled The Best Tips for Visiting X) is hype. We’ve spent decades in New York City and might be qualified to do an article about the best things to do in New York City (or Singapore), but that would be from our perspective, not as an expert or as a knower of all things in New York City. You cannot know everything about a place in a lifetime, let alone after a short visit. We will offer our perspective on the places we visit as, people who have been there but not as knowers.
The Context Of Street Art
We also believe in sharing real photography. For instance, street art (we love) is site-specific art. Some street art is found in gentrifying communities. Some are in poor communities. Sometimes in business districts and other areas. Trash cans, cars, and other objects can be in front of the mural. The place shapes the art and the viewing of the art. Yet most street art photographs omit the site in favor of the art. We will be curating our street art photos to include an experience of the place in which it is situated. That’s part of the experience.
While we are on this topic, Sue’s hair is always messy, and she has trouble looking at the camera when taking selfies. We promise to share some of her real selfies!
We are also interested in developing an authentic readership. We are no longer chasing SEO-optimized text to attract readers. Given the ongoing Google search algorithm changes, this doesn’t work any longer for smaller sites like ours. If our posts strike a cord, please, subscribe, respond, and share. If not, don’t.
Sharing the People We Meet
As for humanistic travel writing, the people make the place. We will be sharing more stories and videos about the people we meet on our journeys. Our common humanity is critically important as our countries become more polarized (internally and externally). Wars and conflicts are happening all over our world. We need to touch each other and create new experiences. Travel is one, though certainly not the only or even the best, way to do this.
We remember being in Peru and hearing about historical times and then being in Brazil and being told a completely different story about the same period. Stories and memories are not facts. They are the experiences of that person at that time. And, they can be changed and seen very differently, even by the same person later. Our world is controlled by dualism (right/wrong, black/white) but we all live in gray, purple, and green places.
LGBTQ+ Travel Writing
As LGBTQ+ travelers, we think it’s important to share our experiences with LGBTQ+ communities around the world. We rarely frequent bars, but we make an effort to connect with LGBTQ+ businesses and communities. We will be continuing to share their/our stories.
We hope you will enjoy reading our posts or at least find them thought-provoking. We’d like to hear about your travel as well. Let us know if you are going somewhere interesting or have photos you want to share.
