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Technology is changing how we write — and how we think about writing

An exploration of how writing systems, from ancient Chinese characters to modern alphabets, shape language, and whether users of ChatGPT can be said to be authors at all.
By
  1. Andrew Robinson

    1. Andrew Robinson is the author of Lost Languages (2002) and other books on scripts and decipherment. He is based in London.

A Chinese man writes Chinese calligraphy on red decorations for Lunar New Year at a market stall in Hong Kong, China.

Chinese calligraphy can be traced back more than 3,000 years to the carving of characters onto animal bones for divination. Credit: Billy H.C. Kwok/Bloomberg/Getty

Tools of the Scribe: How Writing Systems, Technology, and Human Factors Interact to Affect the Act of Writing Brian Roark et al. Springer (2025)

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Nature 649, 1099-1101 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00245-0

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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