Written by a human

100+100 Words: Since being on the towards-hundred-side of 40, I too started reminiscing on memories of things past. This is not on purpose – it seems to happen by design. I remember an innocent time when children played in mud and climbed trees and collected anything from erasers to stamps and writing block pages as hobbies and I remember – tearfully – family and friends who are not here anymore and friends who had emigrated for their children and are now left by their children. And sometimes I even wonder if the memories I have, are mine or if they’re from books or made up.

Today we – once innocents – are up against intelligence generated by machines. We have more knowledge available at our fingertips than any other generation before us. But it made us lazier and dumber. AI is the next buzz happening and it’s a bigger threat to human creativity and originality than anything ever before. And like the phenomenon of smart phones, we will let it take us over – willingly. But let’s fight back. Let’s do real things again, like crocheting and drawing by hand. Let’s write emails and essays using our brains, because if we don’t, soon we won’t be able to anymore.

10+10-words Takeaway: Let’s live for real in an artificially-driven world, so that we have real memories to reminisce on when we’re old.

Read the previous 100-word Pondering here.

© 2025 Fielies De Kock

Fielies De Kock is a freelance content writer/blogger (www.fieliesdekock.com) living in Hermanus in the Overberg, South Africa, with her crazy-haired husband and two dogs. She authored a children’s chapter book and a few short reads and is co-author of 125 Creative Writing Prompts for Petrolheads (available on Amazon Kindle) with her content writer son – who also has crazy hair.