A "Wrant" Against the Written Word

 Whether the written word is obsolete or not might seem like an over-the-top question.  But before deciding too quickly, let me ask you when was the last time you did a long division problem with pen and paper?  Or even addition or multiplication?

I do multiplication mentally when calculating the prepay price of gasoline.  But I do the multiplication in a weird sort of spatial/geometric way, not much like how we did multiplication in grade school.

Or play this game: imagine a 75 year old comparing today with the year of their birth, 1950.  I find it even more interesting to go back 75 years from their year of birth, 1950.  What sort of predictions would somebody have made in 1875 about what 1950 would look like?

Another way to ask the question is: why was writing invented in the first place?

1.  Semi-permanent records of kings and gods, inscribed into stone or clay tablets.  Even papyrus lasted a lot longer than a human lifetime.  The same with parchment and then paper.

from Wikipedia

2.  Portable communication.  

3.  Verification of authenticity when the world started trusting seals, stamps, and signatures.

Those are three pretty good justifications for written words and numbers.  But can't you do the same with sounds and pictures on your smartphone?  So who needs writing, anymore?

I am on the rampage now against writing because of the difficulty of sending somebody my passwords and account numbers.  You would be surprised at how ambiguous common fonts are about the numeral 0, lower case letter o, upper case O, numeral 1, lower case letter l, and upper case I.  This post uses blogger's default font.  Notice how it fails to distinguish the numeral 1 from lower case l.

Oh sure, everybody would like to sell you an app that offers all sorts of cutesie-wootsie styles.  And Microsoft offers few fonts with a text file, so that you will pay for their Office.

Notice how I nobly resisted the sordid topic of English spelling.