Is this what I was looking for?!
Oh wow! it was able to recreate the ‘gist’ of something I’d written in a new session with information I’d asked it to grab from a previous writing I did, information it told me is what was needed to recreate a writer’s style. It did. This is it. Below I’ll post its analysis of a writing I did, and after that, the original writing.
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“label each of the aspects from the style guide within the text itself so that I know when each applies.”
Back in ’83 (Setting), when I was just a young tech enthusiast (Characterization), I remember watching this show, Beyond Tomorrow (Allusion), and it painted this picture of a future brimming with technological advancements (Theme). It had me hooked, imagining computers talking to us and solving all of life’s little problems at the touch of a button (Imagery). Boy, was I wrong (Irony).
As the years rolled by, like a muddy sloth crawling through the swamp of humanity’s never-ending quest for progress (Metaphor), I started to get a little skeptical (Tone). Sure, we had some cool stuff—smartphones, the internet, even social media (for better or worse, Pacing). But those expectations from my youth, the ones that were supposed to be fulfilled by now, still seemed so far away (Conflict).
I remember the first time I heard about this new tech that was going to change everything (Structure, Anecdotal). They said it would catapult us into that future I’d been dreaming of since the ’80s (Chronological). So, I kept an eye on it, followed the news, and watched as breakthrough after breakthrough was announced (Varied Syntax, Voice). There was talk of super-fast computers, teleportation, and all sorts of wild ideas (Colloquial Diction, Relatable).
But then the 2010s rolled around (Moderate Pacing), and I couldn’t help but notice that things weren’t moving as quickly as I’d hoped (Tension). Sure, there were some cool developments, but it was hardly the stuff of my childhood dreams (Reflective Mood). I started to wonder if maybe I’d been expecting too much (First-person Point-of-view). Maybe the world just wasn’t ready for the kind of technological revolution I’d been hoping for (Personal Experiences).
And now, as I sit here reflecting on all the unmet expectations and personal disappointments of the past few decades (Nostalgic Tone), I can’t help but feel a little bittersweet (Mood). The latest tech is still out there, waiting to change the world, but it seems like we’re just as far away as ever from that utopian future I imagined as a kid (Conflict).
But I guess that’s just life, isn’t it (Informal Style, Conversational)? A series of hopes, dreams, and unfulfilled promises, all wrapped up in a never-ending pursuit of something better (Theme). Maybe someday we’ll get there. Maybe we’ll finally see the kind of advancements that the latest tech has been hinting at for all these years (Cautious Optimism). But until then, I’ll just keep hoping, waiting, and watching as the muddy sloth of humanity continues its slow crawl toward the future (Personal Narrative, Bittersweet Mood).
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STYLE GUIDE BASED on a specific writing:
Style: Informal, conversational
Tone: Reflective, nostalgic, skeptical
Diction: Colloquial, relatable
Syntax: Varied, some long sentences with multiple clauses
Structure: Anecdotal, chronological
Pacing: Moderate
Voice: Personal, first-person narrative
Theme: Technological advancements, unmet expectations
Characterization: Narrator as tech enthusiast with personal experiences
Imagery: Memories of past technology, personal experiences
Symbolism: N/A
Point-of-view: First-person
Dialogue: N/A
Setting: Various instances across time (1983-2010s)
Conflict: Unfulfilled technological predictions, personal disappointments
Foreshadowing: N/A
Allusion: Generation 5 computer movement, Beyond Tomorrow TV show
Metaphor: Muddy slothiness of humanity
Simile: N/A
Irony: The narrator’s cautious optimism despite past disappointments
Allegory: N/A
Mood: Reflective, bittersweet
Tension: Between past expectations and current reality
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specific writing (I had chatGPT fix my punctuation)
He’s a much smarter guy than me. I’ve just had many disappointments in many great predictions through the years with promises and timeframes, so it’s my personal bias. Then again, I can’t complain.
When I was an 11 yr old kid in 1983, I got my first computer, a Tandy Color Computer 2. I saw something in the Radio Shack catalog that hooked the phone into a typewriter looking thing with a piece of paper in it. I imagined being able to type to people all over the world on that thing and be able to ask it questions and get answers, but instead of the typewriter and paper thing, it was on my new computer and TV screen. Then I went further and imagined it in my pocket. Then I imagined everybody having it. I wrote a few little stories about it and figured “someday it’ll happen”.
In 1989, I got my first modem and had a PC. Online. I never looked back. Wanted a Zoomer in ’91. Got a Handspring Visor in ’99. My first cell phone in 2002, and iPhone 4s in 2013. [had Blackberry before that which was great but ‘not quite’].
And the smartphones and tablet explosion, seeing it kids hands, seeing a family today at Dunkin’ Donuts all happy together but on their devices; almost like a quiet family reading books at the dinner table together – I found it a nice thing.
I watched the growth of AI. My head was filled with promises in the 80s. I worked on them a little in 90/91, learning about neural networking, chaos theory, complexity theory, and I knew that computers would eventually be able to catch up to theory and actually DO some of this stuff on a big scale. At the time, it was stuff on a VAX/VMS mainframe and some stuff I did on the PC, but I understood how it worked, and AI is not that complicated.
But there are two things that killed some of the hope in me: In the late 1980s, the Generation 5 computer movement was dead. The big project in Japan I think just… poof went away. I had a lot of hopes for that as a teenager. Then in the 90s, NOBODY talked about robotics, and AI was limited to characters in games and some stuff in Linguistics. Promising NLP but not much else.
I never expected the robots to come back and AI seemed to be the stuff of obscure dying programming languages and telephone switchboards. [nothing against Elang here – it’s an amazing language]
Then the 2010s. One after another, “We have a brain on a chip!” IBM says. One of them lets it slip out about it having a cat’s brain, but got rightly chastised for that. Other brain on chips announcements come and go with regularity. Developments in quantum chips have been sluggish and painful. New nanotechnology announcements are made… then they fade away and vanish… no industry involved. No products coming out for market. Nothing new on the horizon.
So, I’m selfish I think. I’ve waited since 1990 for “foldable, disposable touch screen computers” instead of the green screen dumb terminals we were on. Lots of advancements and I just saw the other day a really thin TV – but until it’s on the market, my skeptical flags go up again.
A prototype that doesn’t lead to industry isn’t a product but rather it’s proof of concept. So, I’m a jaded optimist. Between doom and gloom scenarios I’ve been hit with and The Future Is within Your LifeTime promises since I was a kid watching Beyond Tomorrow on Nickelodeon [or Beyond 2000? I don’t remember the show], I kept getting hit by great things on one hand, and disappointments on the other hand. None of the predictions came to pass as promised, but we always seem to end up with “something else”. Something that’s great but not quite it.
I shouldn’t complain. Really, I’m grateful… it’s just that anytime somebody “has it all figured out”… it usually depends on the cooperation of many, many people who haven’t bought into the concept and have their OWN agendas that get in the way of the Utopian dreams.
The people with their own agendas are a part of this reality and have to be taken into account when making future predictions. Politics, competing industries, all of these things have to come into play when attempting to engineer a future. I don’t know if I could do any better, though.
But graphs of progress on paper remind me of the graphs of progress during the late 1990s in the stock market. “Dow at 30000” was promised; my boss COMPLETELY believed it. I was investing too. He was going into Enron and the like – even gave me a book about “The Future of Business”… I still have it somewhere… and EVERY company in there were the scam companies of the late 90s that were trading on phantoms and the phantoms went away.
Thankfully, I did DRIP and stuck with known industries, and it worked out well. I felt bad for my boss because he lost a lot. He believed the graphs of perpetual progress.
But things ebb and flow. They go up and down. To believe, “Everything in my predictions will come true ONLY IF everybody cooperates with this” isn’t a realistic notion.
I WANT to believe. I just can’t yet. I expect the sluggish world to get in the way at every single turn and the kind of progress he predicts has to work THROUGH the muddy slothiness of humanity to achieve its goals.
I think it will come to pass. I just have to be cautiously optimistic, that’s all.
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