Is Writing Obsolete?

In the early days of the internet, blogs were the modern equivalent of the morning newspaper.  But ever since You Tube got big, the internet has become the television set.  

The smartphone can convert your voice to text.  Presumably this capability will improve over time.

Audiobooks are starting to replace paper books for me.  I have no idea how general this trend is.

Taken together, these trends almost imply that writing and reading are becoming obsolete.  I have mixed feelings about that.  Do any of us have the same loyalty to the written word that we have to our spoken language?

It might be true that the development of writing was one of the big steps in civilization.  (It's odd that I have never read a history book dedicated to the single topic of writing.)  Writing had advantages: it added permanence to our thoughts and communications, and it eliminated the need for face-to-face communication.

There are other ways to provide these advantages.  Even before the age of modern electronics there was radio, phonographs, telephones, and the electrical telegraph.  There was even a flag-based system, called the semaphore, before the electrical telegraph!

Modern electronics allows for permanence as long as information is backed up or stored in the cloud.  (I doubt that any hard drive or flash drive will function as long as the clay tablets of ancient Sumeria.)

So why is writing even needed anymore?  The only real reason is that 'the medium is the message.'  Writing eliminates the distraction of the presenter's physical appearance, attractiveness, and lively personality.  The reader is forced to consider the writer's thoughts.