Linked to the post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/msjadelee/2022/08/05/task-12-speculative-futures/

The suspenseful music makes these movie trailers! Both were entertaining to watch and to imagine a world without writing manually. Honestly, the thought of losing such a skill that feels so natural made it sentimental and had me clinging on to present and past joys of shopping for notebooks and fancy pens to write with. This future does not seem far from reality as I notice in my very own 2.5 year old how intuitive she is with the screens, swiping through the apps and the keyboard compared to having to explicitly teach her how to hold a writing tool as she scribbles on the page to leave her mark. In the utopian scenario, Jade’s script explains “teachers don’t need to waste time teaching students how to write.” Alternatively, educators would need to spend more time teaching students about digital citizenship and authorship at a younger age. If manual writing were to become obsolete and succumb to the digital age, there would be a greater need to protect information and data with the lack of privacy and our every thoughts/ ideas being digitized. 

After watching the videos,  I was left with more questions about the potential outcomes of both scenarios. What impact would the loss of manual writing have on our dexterity? The simple act of holding a pencil takes practice and muscle control, would we see more students struggle with fine motor tasks? Since digital writing is less time consuming than handwriting, would this influence attention? How would this impact art forms that use similar instruments like painting?

 I was taken back to Module 4: The Mechanization of Writing where new technologies have emerged and replaced existing mediums. How might remediation of digital writing occur so that there is a “backup” if there was a worldwide infinite power surge? For example, there are applications now where we can still handwrite using digital tools. I look forward to hearing the podcast interviewing Jade’s children and their opinion on the potential of writing changes, and hearing from the next generation themselves!