The Touchscreen Era

A friend of mine is undergoing her PhD and is required to lecture undergraduates. One day she mentioned a ‘touchscreen generation’. Elaborating upon this she told me hardly any of her students can use a keyboard. They were used to pushing on a screen to input their data.

Over in Vietnam many children in the school I taught in didn’t understand how to use a controller with buttons on, instead, they would try to switch a television or computer on by repeatedly pressing different parts of the screen. Bizarre? Yes. Absolutely. I asked myself the question: Is Writing A Dying Art?

Technology is pushing out the more physical aspects of day to day life. Visionary books like Brave New World (Huxley) or more appropriately Fahrenheit 451 (Bradley) don’t seem as far off as they suggest. Could the world be dominated be screens in the future? It’s not a new concept, so more precisely I look at the act of writing.

Physical Writing

Writing with a pen directly onto paper is a way to express yourself physically and mentally. I mean the pen is an extension of the arm, the body, the soul. It’s important to remember writing is different than creating art. Art will present images as an all in one aspect, writing presents individual words with individual meanings. Obviously, the image an artist creates will offer words, emotive words, but the origin of those words comes from where? A laptop? An Ipad? Or from the foundation of language? Pen on paper. More importantly the mind. This is what I want to explore.

A sensible start would be with the lineage of the written word. Precisely, we’ll look at around 7BC, where it’s contested the first written poems were adjudged to originate. Namely, Homer’s Iliad followed by The Odyssey (although the Iliad is a little dubious). Homer recited his poems from memory, perhaps sculpting the epics over years and telling them over many nights to his audience. Oral descriptions, conversation and storytelling dominated civilisations so it is plausible that writing is an “agent”. It could be completely natural, especially in the modern/postmodern world that the surface changes to hyperreal objects. After all, writing has never been tangible. You can’t feel writing.

Blackboard to Smartboard

The exception to this is brail, remarkably aiding the blind and perhaps the only outlier I can think of. You could assume that with technological advancement brail could be formed on screens, constantly changing with each sentence. However, the fact remains it is a form of physical writing. Using a pen is not. So, how long is it before schools rid themselves of pens, pencils, crayons for a handheld device?  This is what my friend and I discussed. How relevant will it really be to be able to write? For example, growing up in the 1990’s I saw the replacement of blackboards. In came the “smart board”. Allowing teachers to project video, replace slide after slide. The screens correct spelling in an instant can change into a different visual the next, immediacy is a concern.

Real Pen Vs Digital Pen

Of course, the slides on a screen aren’t real. The hyperreal dominating written word has already happened. The Independent newspaper is solely online. So, what’s the danger? I worry if a paper isn’t felt, if the physical is budged out from society, if pens are no longer in use, writing will change its definition so many times it will become foreign and perhaps one day lost. Besides, will country’s elite benefit as there’s bound to be a price tag? This is the changing of learning which threatens to alienate people, feeling, emotion but it feeds the necessity of instant gratification the new world is determined to pursue.

By Joe S, private tutor in London. 

How does the digital realm resonate with you? Let us know what you think!

Interested in working with an English writing tutor? Contact Us today to arrange to work with one of our inspiring tutors.