23. {insert footnote}

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Oh, so I haven’t yet convinced you that writing is dead? In that case, I have more ideas.

Writing is dead (he types on his keyboard)

***

Writing is dead because we can interact with our devices without writing, and from our devices we get all the information we ever need.*

Traditionally, we accessed information through reading and writing, be it a book or a computer keyboard. But the keyboard is disappearing, and instead we touch things on the screen; we swipe, we pinch, we shake. We are increasingly talking, in natural language to our devices and they talk back to us. We are using the movement of our body to control our devices. We can interact with them by moving our eyes, or even simply by thinking (oh horror?). Soon, we will not need writing to interact with our gadgets at all.

This fact alone means that soon one will be able to function perfectly adequately in our society without knowing how to read and write. Who needs to read a road sign when the navigation app tells us to turn right at the next light?

However, there is an even deeper change happening that diminishes the role of writing in our society.

We are moving from learning about ideas (which are served well by writing), to learning how to do things (which is not well served by writing). Continue reading →

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