Pen and paper writing – a relic of the past?

A few months ago I read an article about the Death of Handwriting, which I’d found rather amusing and even quite bewildering – just what was so bad about the disappearance of longhand writing, I wonder? Admittedly I take a rather utilitarian view on this – it’s people like me who would choose to demolish buildings that would have been, decades later, marvelled as a cultural icon – but really, other than nostalgia and perhaps the ability to read old pieces of writing, just what exactly has been lost?

Dare I extend this line of thought to pen-and-paper writing? I cannot deny that the older method has its advantages, and I do think that it might still be the superior choice for creative writing, but when dealing with non-fiction expository pieces, does it really make sense to avoid the QWERTY keyboard, which to many has become a primary method of writing today? The typical office job today involves reading and generating text in the digital format. On the individual level, unless one is a published writer, your most-read words are likely to be in electronic form. As for myself, I wrote a large part of this very blog post on a smartphone while on a bus.

I don’t seek to get rid of the traditional form of writing (as mentioned before, I believe there’s definitely value in it), but I do think that schools could give greater emphasis and even allowance to digital writing, even at the pre-university level. Assuming that education is meant to prepare the student for his future work or even everyday life, it only makes sense for a portion of language lessons to be spent on writing in the format they are most likely to use today. Granted that it may no longer be as relevant by the time they start working (neural interfaces, perhaps?), but in the absence of the psychic educator, I think it is the least we could do.