What's the point to read/write anymore?

I’ve not written many articles lately. Well, I was never a very frequent writer, but every once in a while I would still write something up.

For me, the biggest reason to write was never “content creation”. It was to check if I really understood something well enough that I could explain it in simple words.

But now there is a bigger thought sitting in my head.

If AI can explain almost any technical topic on demand, then what is the point of reading and writing articles anymore?

A big chunk of tech writing is about taking something confusing and making it easier to understand. That is also what AI is very good at.

Let’s say you want to learn about Redis, TLS, React rendering, VPC endpoints, or just some annoying Typescript type error. You don’t have to go through five blog posts anymore. You can ask the AI to explain it in simple terms, then ask follow-up questions, then ask it to make the explanation even simpler until it clicks.

That changes something fundamental.

Earlier, if someone had a clean way to explain a topic, that itself was a huge value. Now explanation has become cheap.

Why still write?

I think writing still matters, but maybe for a different reason.

When I write, I am not just transferring information to someone else. I am also forcing myself to slow down and think properly. A lot of times I feel I understand a topic, but the moment I try to explain it in plain English, the gaps start showing up immediately.

So writing is still useful even if no one reads it.

The second thing is that good technical writing is not only about the final explanation. It is also about the path to that explanation. What confused you? What assumption was wrong? What mental model finally made it click?

AI can often give the answer very fast. But a human-written article can still show the struggle, the tradeoff, and the exact point where things become intuitive. That part still feels valuable to me.

Maybe the point is not to write less, but to write only when I have something more real to say.

If I am just rewriting documentation in simpler language, AI will probably do a better job faster. But if I am writing from actual experience, from confusion, from implementation details, from mistakes, from a mental model that took me time to build, then I think there is still value in that.

In other words, AI makes generic explanation cheaper, but it does not automatically replace perspective.

I still don’t have a perfectly clear answer here. This post is more like a note to myself than a conclusion.

But one thing I do know is this:

I still learn by writing.

So maybe that is reason enough to continue.