The End of Literacy Is on the Horizon.

• Position: Prediction that reading and writing will not be necessary - Brief Article

Reading and writing will be unnecessary in the future, William Crossman, founder of the Institute for the Study of Talking Computers and Oral Cultures, told the World Future Society, Bethesda, Md. "We're witnessing the beginning of an earthshaking transformation of human society away from print culture and toward oral culture."

Reading and writing was once an efficient and much-needed technology for storing and retrieving information, he notes, but it will eventually be replaced by user-friendly computers that respond to our voices and tell us what we want to know. "By 2050, writing and reading will mainly be a thing of the past in the electronically developed countries," he predicts.

Human biology is driving us to...