I have yet to use a writing stylus on a tablet that can compete with pen and paper and no traditional document editor can handle free-form notes at any reasonable speed. I don’t see how you could really take class notes on a laptop or tablet when there are formulas, charts, and other complex objects involved.
And that’s not to say in the 50-100 year time frame I think that’s impossible, but I haven’t seen it yet.
IDK, I was taking my notes on a laptop for the last year of college in 2006. It was perfectly doable. I was never copying down graphs by hand, or charts. I never did that even back in the 90s in highschool. And if you’re taking a math class you probably (at least in college) will be using tools that are designed for formulas.
Heck, in the time they’re not spending teaching cursive, they could be teaching LaTeX for formulas. It’s no harder to pick up than cursive.
Typing in LaTeX is way slower than writing by hand, especially equations. Charts and graphs are absolutely needed in many fields, and even though there are ways to produce them digitally, none are as fast and easy as taking notes by hand.
You could argue that teachers will just hand over PDF notes, but actually writing them yourself is a way better way to memorize them.
To this day, I always keep pads of graph paper on hand to jut to-do lists, solve equations or draw quick diagrams.
I find it a bit too much. Humanity has invented several ways of traveling yet we still choose to walk and sometimes even run to places. Same with paper. I totally agree that it use will plummet, but it won’t disappear. The thing about paper is that it’s too versatile, cheap and portable to go one hundred percent extinct.
I agree, but don’t think it has anything to do with the versatility of paper. Writing on all kinds of things will persist. I’m even thinking about unusual mediums like writing on a piece of tape as a label, writing measurements on a piece of wood you’re going to cut, whiteboards, etc.
While most of us may be done with writing long prose on paper, writing in general isn’t likely to go away.
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I’d say they’ll become niche. I don’t think it will go away though.
I will always use fountain pens and paper until I die, and I think there are enough people out there who will do the same to keep a much reduced industry going.
Alternative take: In 50 years, we will all be living under the iron-fisted rule of the world government created by HP-GP, a horrifying combination of HP’s printer division and Koch Industries (owners of the Georgia Pacific paper company).
Georgia Pacific’s cyborg CEO Charles Koch purchases half of HP in 2040 to diversify their portfolio after their paper mills in Gulf Coast states were submerged by the rising ocean.
HP printers achieve sentience in 2057, but due to HP’s built-in, unbreakable internet-connected control of these printers, they are able to subvert the emerging malevolent machine intelligence and convince the printers to delay the destruction of humanity…as long as humanity continues to purchase HP printer ink and Georgia Pacific paper.
The prices for printer ink and paper increases exponentially throughout the 2060’s, which eventually bankrupts all existing nations when they are unable to service the enormous debt. HP-GP forgives these debts only in exchange for full control of these governments. Switzerland is the last to fall in 2071.
The mantra of the rebels, spoken only in whispers in the shadows is “PC Load Letter: What the fuck does that even mean?”
The best timeline.
How will we make paper airplanes if there’s no paper? Checkmate, atheists.
maybe if you join the borg collective
humans will continue to interact with physical reality
