29 Apr 2026 24 min read Movies

A Tiny Community in a Fractured World

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A Tiny Community in a Fractured World

How AI will bring us together, but not in the way you think

I was standing in a line after the funeral service, waiting my turn to give my condolences to the family. Daphne’s husband was first, followed by three ladies who I assumed must be Daphne’s sisters. Daphne had been a member of my creative writing group, and she had been attending ever since the first session, nine years ago.

I had always known she enjoyed the sessions, after all she turned up every month. But that day, at her funeral, I was bowled over by what her husband and sisters told me; how much she valued the monthly workshops, the confidence they had given her, the friendships she had made.

I’d had no idea the workshops were that important to her.

Is it just me, or has the world, our existence, felt slightly different since the pandemic and the lockdowns? Seems to me that nothing has ever been quite the same, that 2020 was a watershed year, a turning point.

Since that year of enforced solitude we’ve seen an increase in wars, AI has swamped us with the threat of impending doom, and we’re all just … not as connected as we used to be, which is ironic considering the internet has made us the most connected we’ve ever been.

We see the world through a screen.

Walk down any street and you will be dodging pedestrians, their heads down, eyes glued to their mobile devices, and not looking where they are going.

I know, I sound like a grumpy old man shouting at the clouds. And I’ll come clean; I’ve been known to walk down the street on my phone. Also, I have to say, the internet has enabled me to have a career. I’m speaking to you now through the magic of the internet, after all. But as my life grows ever more digital, and as I see increasing uses of AI, and most of it slop, I’m drawn back to the analogue world, and the human connection.

The creative writing workshop that Daphne valued so much still takes place every month, at Kingswinford Library.

The workshops are roughly similar each session; we talk about what we have been reading since we last met, and our writing. Some of us will read out pieces that we have written. I might discuss new writing lessons I have learned, and I will provide a prompt to get us all writing, after which we will read out our work and discuss it. There is also tea, coffee, biscuits, and laughter.

We’ve built a relationship up over the years. We are a tiny community in a fractured world.

And I think that, in a weird way, this is what AI will do for us. As the world becomes increasingly fractured and digitised, as our trust in what we read and see on the internet is increasingly betrayed, I’m convinced that many of us will be driven to seeking out human connection. A realisation that technology should be serving us, not the other way around.

Because, as Daphne showed me, connecting with each other, in all our messy, contradictory, creative, quirky ways is what it means to be alive.

Currently Reading

Not my usual kind of book, but I have just bought A Very Vexing Murder by my friend Lucy Andrew, which is set in the world of Emma. The novel stands on its own, but being the completist I am, I had to read Emma first.