Dumber Smart (or, Smarter Dumb :-?) World

When was the last time you wrote diary or a letter to someone?

When was the last time you wrote anything in longhand other than scribbling grocery list or To-be-done Post-It Note or a cheque?

Yes, since desktops/laptops (& now smartphones) became ubiquitous, writing in longhand is forgotten, has become almost extinct! (Confession - My own handwriting which was never good even in student days, has now deteriorated so much that even chemists may find it tough to decipher! 😊 )

Now very soon we will be forgetting one more important basic skill & that is ‘reading’!

Yes, and here again keep aside whether you are reading in electronic format or the hard-copy way, but overall the great habit of reading itself is waning..

People just don’t have patience to ready anything more than 400 words (including this message which is though only 327 words! 😊) . They would just ‘like’ it (out of habit or just being nice)  & jump to the next post…mostly a featured video feed!

Yes, with 4G becoming the norm (& 5G around the corner), data streaming has improved exponentially in last 12-18 months. All kind of video clips (right from cute babies to cute pets to standup comedies) have gone viral on all social media. Looks like publishers also have realized this trend  & so are bringing all kind of audio books (even in reginal languages) .

Who knows, even typewriting (on laptops/smartphones) will also be diminished soon. (Due to virtual assistants Siri / Alexa. Even staid MS-Outlook is allowing dictation / reading message etc.)

So welcome to the ‘smarter’ future where we would have forgotten tables / basic mental math (due to calculator feature), spelling/grammar (due to spellcheck/grammar check feature), typewriting (due to voice-to-text feature which would become mainstream very soon), writing & reading too!

Just see and hear things!

Now think what will happen when thought waves get recognized & converted into text/image!! 😊

Welcome to the Dumber Smart world!!!