Mit Sandru's Blog - Posts Tagged "write"
What will happen to reading and writing?
I found a quote saying, “We live in an era of smart phones and stupid people.” Maybe ignorant I'd say.
However there is a point to this. I don’t know about you but when I was a kid I learned my multiplication table by heart. And I still remember how much is 2 x 2. Along the way in the seventies the electronic calculators became affordable and everyone began using them. Why learn multiplications? It is easier to push buttons, on a smart phone today.
So, back to reading. By far, most of the information is written and most people need to know how to read to function. And thanks to texting, people still know how to read, although it may say: WTF DGMW IMNSHO THIS IS NYOB. 4 which u’ll need a dictionary.
The reading transformations happened because of technology, which will continue to advance and affect how we read. In my opinion we'll go back to the pre-written era in history. Our ancestors communicated well without knowing how to write, but only over short distances. For long distances the written word was necessary. But what will happen when you can speak into the smart phone and it’s converted into text (text is simpler to transmit) and the recipient receives text, which is converted back to spoken words. This technology exists already. I wrote books by dictating to my computer. And listened to emails read by the computer.
However what will happen when the technology will be so good that you’ll not be able to distinguish between machine voice and human voice. Or the machine will understand languages easily, regardless of idioms, slang, or accent. My Amazon Alexa understands me well, after a little training. As a matter of fact it understood my wife when she yelled at me to lower the volume when I was listening to Pink Floyd too loud. Alexa shut down. Even Alexa obeys my wife.
Writing and reading will not go away soon, but reading may fall in disuse, and the technology will replace the reading skill. In that case all books may become audio books, and we’ll return to the telling of stories, again. No cave, no fire, just smart phone and ear buds.
But why stop here? What if the technology assisted by A.I. could transform a written book into a movie? YouTube civilization I'd say.
However there is a point to this. I don’t know about you but when I was a kid I learned my multiplication table by heart. And I still remember how much is 2 x 2. Along the way in the seventies the electronic calculators became affordable and everyone began using them. Why learn multiplications? It is easier to push buttons, on a smart phone today.
So, back to reading. By far, most of the information is written and most people need to know how to read to function. And thanks to texting, people still know how to read, although it may say: WTF DGMW IMNSHO THIS IS NYOB. 4 which u’ll need a dictionary.
The reading transformations happened because of technology, which will continue to advance and affect how we read. In my opinion we'll go back to the pre-written era in history. Our ancestors communicated well without knowing how to write, but only over short distances. For long distances the written word was necessary. But what will happen when you can speak into the smart phone and it’s converted into text (text is simpler to transmit) and the recipient receives text, which is converted back to spoken words. This technology exists already. I wrote books by dictating to my computer. And listened to emails read by the computer.
However what will happen when the technology will be so good that you’ll not be able to distinguish between machine voice and human voice. Or the machine will understand languages easily, regardless of idioms, slang, or accent. My Amazon Alexa understands me well, after a little training. As a matter of fact it understood my wife when she yelled at me to lower the volume when I was listening to Pink Floyd too loud. Alexa shut down. Even Alexa obeys my wife.
Writing and reading will not go away soon, but reading may fall in disuse, and the technology will replace the reading skill. In that case all books may become audio books, and we’ll return to the telling of stories, again. No cave, no fire, just smart phone and ear buds.
But why stop here? What if the technology assisted by A.I. could transform a written book into a movie? YouTube civilization I'd say.
