Tolkien Had a Pipe. I Have a Plugin

 

Writing in the Age of Algorithms

Tolkien leaned back in his chair, pipe in hand, smoke curling like Elvish script into the air. He had time — to think, to wonder, to stitch entire mythologies with threads of ancient languages and lived sorrow.

Me?
I lean forward, hunched over a glowing rectangle, wondering if my blog post will be read by people — or just sorted, ranked, and judged by an algorithm that only cares about “engagement.”

Their world gave them silence.

Ours gives us SEO.

They had Oxford and exile.
We have notifications and dopamine loops.

They wrote for eternity.
We write for the timeline.

And yet...
Despite the plugins and pop-ups, the noise and analytics,
the yearning is still the same:

To make meaning.
To wrestle with beauty, suffering, and truth.
To create something that lasts, even in a world that scrolls too fast to notice.

So maybe the plugin isn’t the enemy.
It’s just a tool — like Tolkien’s pipe or Dostoyevsky’s ink-stained hands.
What matters is what passes through us into the page.

AI might autocomplete my sentences.
But it doesn’t complete me.
Only reading, prayer, pain, silence, and joy can do that.

I may never write like Tolkien.
But maybe — if I light a candle and unplug the Wi-Fi —
I might, for a fleeting moment, touch the stillness he once knew.

And from there,
maybe the words will come.