Reading is dead! Long live reading!

I don't think we'll all read the same way in years to come. The problem isn't so much the letter or the word. I think it's the sentence and paragraph. And beyond - the most acute problem's the page. Let's face it, it's always been the page. Yes, and the line. Definitely the left to right or right to left line (in Arabic for example).

So, what do I predict will change and why?

Here's the crux of it: I'm sick of losing my phone. You're sick of losing your phone. As an absolutely essential piece of kit to navigate modern 21st century, it can disappear too easily. I'm also tired of having to charge it up, as well as peer at its screen. The kit and caboodle will have to be fixed to us or in us. It just will. Our movement or body chemistry will power it, whatever it is.

Here's a few extra predictions.

It'll be small, small tech. Lightweight. Barely noticeable.

The screen - if there is one at all - will also be much smaller than we're used to. Maybe the size of a smart watch.

And this is the bit I want to tell you more about. think the host will consult it and gather info as it's presented in a dynamic way. I'm sure text won't be shown to us on the screen in a form we'd recognise. For speed (who can argue that info's not coming at us faster and faster?) words and sentences will be scribed in a spirited moving type. It'll actually move on the screen or wherever it's perceived. It'll be alive - dancing and jumping and changing form and colour (or texture) and pattern. And there'll be push and pull. The info will be presented at speed and the exact form and pace will be mediated by the host in some way. The eye/receiving sense won't track like it does with existing text. It'll act more like a bucket to be filled, the device taking on the role of a jet in my analogy.

So we'll have to learn to read in a different way. Reading will still take place in time, but at a much quicker pace - maybe not even mapped formally in the form of spoken language. Letters and words and sentences will transmutate in front of us. After all, writing and type was developed for 2D surfaces, like vellum or paper. Even in sci-fi movies we see hovering rectangles of static symbols. Alien though they look, they're redolent of our present.

Will it be tiring? Yes to us in 2023 used to manually scanning across bodies of text without it morphing and changing for us, sure. Will it mean that we'll need to write in a different way? Perhaps not straight away. Maybe we'll initially have a dual system. One for inputting language and a different one for speedy dissemination. It may be heavy on the eyes/ receiving sense and cognition for a start until the problems are smoothed out. But once it's mastered - it'll enable reading at a far, far greater pace.

You know it makes sense. There must be lots of different ways to be able to read. Let's start exploring them now.