Scholar and Futurist predicts the end of the written word

William Crossman, a futurist and an English instructor at Vista Community College in Berkeley, believes that reading and writing are doomed, reports Inside Bay Area.

"The respected scholar gives the written word until 2050 to become a curiosity of the past.

Crossman believes that talking computers, which we already have in a primitive form, will be storing and retrieving information for us rather than paper and text. We'll be talking to them and getting our information by asking questions rather than by checking our files or libraries.

Crossman, unlike others, does not wring his hands over this. He sees it as a positive.

When asked why we would give up what many consider to be culture's shining achievement — literacy and written language — Crossman says it's inevitable — text is merely one stage of our evolution, and it's on the way out.

He points to the phonograph, telephone, television, video, movies, and instant and text messaging lingo as proof of our culture's unconscious rebellion against text.

He cites statistics that show that IQ scores worldwide are getting higher as literacy rates are plummeting. Children especially just don't want to learn to read and write, and this is not just for the socioeconomic reasons people tend to ascribe to it, he contends."

emily | 5:07 PM | Do you speak SMS? |
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