Once upon a time, in a land that time forgot, there lived a delightful dinosaur named Dippy. Dippy was a lovable and slightly clumsy creature with a heart as big as his enormous size. Now, one fateful day, as Dippy was roaming the ancient forest, he stumbled upon a peculiar sight. There, nestled amongst the ferns and prehistoric flora, stood a folding chair, its metallic frame gleaming in the sunlight.
Now, Dippy had never seen anything quite like this before. The folding chair's ability to transform from a compact shape to a comfortable seat intrigued him. He couldn't help but feel a strange attraction towards this inanimate object. His heart skipped a beat as he approached the chair, his tail wagging with anticipation.
As Dippy drew closer, he could almost hear the chair whispering sweet nothings, beckoning him to sit down and rest his weary feet. With a dino-sized grin on his face, Dippy took a seat, and oh, what a match they made! The chair cradled him in its embrace, as if it had been designed with his every curve and contour in mind.
Days turned into weeks, and Dippy and the folding chair became inseparable. They explored the ancient forest together, enjoying picnics by the roaring waterfall and gazing at the stars in the night sky. Dippy even attempted to teach the chair some dino-dances, but the chair's rigid nature made it a rather clumsy partner.
Their love story soon became the talk of the dinosaur kingdom. Some raised an eyebrow or two, but most cheered for their unique bond. After all, who could resist the adorable sight of a dinosaur snuggling up with a folding chair?
Alas, as time passed, Dippy discovered that his love for the folding chair was not meant to be. The chair, though dependable and convenient, lacked the warmth and companionship that Dippy desired. With a heavy heart and a farewell roar, Dippy bid adieu to his folding chair love, knowing that their paths would forever diverge.
And so, our dear Dippy continued his journey through the ages, holding fond memories of the folding chair in his heart. For even in the most unexpected connections, love finds a way to touch our lives, reminding us that sometimes, the quirkiest romances can bring moments of joy and laughter in the unlikeliest of circumstances.
Story by the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT, requested to “write a story about a dinosaur who falls in love with a folding chair.” Image by Substack’s in-house image generator, requested to render a “dinosaur next to a folding chair.” Other than my prompts, no humans were involved in constructing this story.
Are we dinosaurs?
What a story! Can you ask ChatGPT if the chair were to have itself stuffed would Dippy take it back?
This raises for me the specter of us humans as nothing more than programmable meatspace subject to logical chains of cause and effect and essentially easily triggered, thoughts cascading into a semblance of meaning but signifying nothing. I don't ultimately believe that, I think that something about the purity of the Zen experience, replete with paradox, gets behind our linguistically mediated sense of self; or gets through to an unmediated and expansive sense of self. But I think that the machiavellian technocratic elites are wanting us to think along these lines; and that's maybe the point of this technology.