Dan Sperbers Article The Future of Writing - 1049 Words

In Dan Sperber’s article â€Å"The Future of Writing,† he assesses the presence of writing and reading in our society, as well as where it may lie in the future . He addresses the possible downfall of writing, the prevalence that reading will hold in our society, as well as how our society will adapt and handle the changes. He also covers the emergence of text-to-speech and speech-to-text technological advances, the effects on society and how the disappearance of the two of them will never fully occur. Sperber’s main claim throughout the article is that writing, with the help of technology, may eventually cease to exist, or at least be far less prominent . While writing has obtained a unique and prominent standing in most places of the†¦show more content†¦However, Sperber does stress that there is a strong difference between the writing and reading, and their relationship with technology. While he states that writing may completely be taken over by technology, the same could never be done to reading. Most particularly because the two are very closely linked, yet writing could never exist without reading. The benefits that are present with writing come mostly from reading, as well as with the fact that as you write, you read along with your words. Though writing may be replaced at some point in time, reading can never be replaced despite the text-to-speech technology. In particular, he addresses the impact that technology could have, and like writing it involves both speech and text, yet in the opposite order. This time technology would allow a person to listen to the text be read to them rather than having to read it themselves. However, Sperber suspects that this is much less likely than the latter, particularly because most people prefer to read and interpret on their own. They typically also do not enjoy the voice of the computer, and it is much harder to follow, especially due to