Reading, writing may become obsolete in future, experts say
By Dick Pelletier
When was the last time you saw
fast-food restaurant employees’ actually key prices into the
register? Today, clerks behind the counter press buttons with
pictures of cups, burgers, or bags of fries. They never need to
read or remember cost of items.
Futurist William Crossman, author of
Vivo [Voice-In/Voice-Out]: The Coming Age of Talking Computers,
believes that tomorrow’s mobile and virtual reality devices,
using visual displays like those in fast-food restaurants, will
render reading, writing, and text obsolete in the not-to-distant
future.
Before Homo sapiens ever existed,
ancient proto-humans accessed information by speaking and
listening; and by smelling, tasting and touching. They relied on
memory to store information they heard. Speaking and listening
was civilization’s preferred method of communication for
millions of years.
Then about 10,000 years ago an
explosion of information emerged with the onset of the
agricultural revolution and memory overload quickly followed.
Human memories were no longer efficient and reliable enough to
store and share the huge volume of new ideas. To overcome this
problem, our forbearers developed a remarkable technology that
has lasted for thousands of years – written language.
Written language, with pictographs and
alphabets, enabled us to record ideas and information on paper
and other materials. It served to extend our human memory, and
today, ranks along with food, air and water as one of the most
important elements in our lives.
However, scientists believe that
today’s reading and writing technologies will not serve us well
in tomorrow’s high-tech world. Oxford University
Professor Lady Greenfield suggests traditional learning systems;
lectures, exams, and books; even reading and writing, will
become obsolete in a society filled with voice-interactive
machines and an Internet that could one day store all the
world’s information.
Tomorrow’s students will be more
comfortable voicing commands to mobile devices and other
displays to ask questions, retrieve information, and play music
and videos. Searching through books will be considered a waste
of time. Forces driving this transformation include the
following:
-
Growing numbers
of young people strongly prefer speech over other
communication systems.
-
Billions of
non-literate citizens around the world with poor reading,
writing and language skills want access to information, but
most become frustrated in attempts to get it.
-
Interactive voice
systems expected by 2012 will replace most keyboards and
remote controls.
Germany’s Infineon Technologies has recently developed a
series of chips powerful enough to enable mobile devices to
process huge data loads required for future education and
entertainment needs.
Traditional input methods of touch
screen, keypad, and pen will give in to speech recognition with
body movement awareness (recognizing hand gestures and facial
expressions through cameras mounted in the device). Using this
enhanced tool as its hub, tomorrow’s “e-Education” systems will
connect students to an intelligent assistant via the Internet,
which will monitor their progress and contact live advisors when
necessary.
Advanced interactive visual display
systems will empower everyone on Earth to understand information
regardless of their ability to read or write. Positive futurists
believe that this breakthrough could, by as early as mid-century
or before, enable more nations to come together technologically
and linguistically and participate in what promises to become an
amazing “magical future.”
This article appeared in various print publications and
on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.
