“In five years’ time Facebook will be definitely mobile, it will be probably be all video,’” said Nicola Mendelsohn, an executive at Facebook, at a conference in London this past September. Mendelsohn went further, suggesting that statistics have shown the written word becoming all but obsolete, replaced by still and moving images and speech.
In short, written language will take a hit, much the way cursive writing has. Naturally, that means no one will need to read anymore, just look and listen. Newspapers like this one will still be around. Unless and until we go to a website version with talking heads on videos. But then what are the English going to wrap their fish and chips in? There is some good news, however. Performance arts will finally become as respectable, practical and in-demand as good dentistry. Actors and actresses will actually be working actors and actresses and not wait-staff. The recording business of audio books, including the classics – all of which will be verbal and visual – will increase significantly. Consider package ingredients labels as barcodes that your wrist-speaker will emit verbally, read aloud by Robert De Niro: “Trigo de harina, gum arabic, natural colors, I’m talking to YOU.”
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