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The three Rs not needed now?

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, a group of abilities traditionally taught in our schools may become little more than a note in a history book.

Oh, that's right, if nobody can read or write then books are no longer a thing, right?

For generations, the abilty to read, write and perform basic arithmetic have been deemed "essential" and have been a cornerstone of the education system.

Those of a certain age will doubtless remember the "round-round-rould" exercises designed to teach the physical dexterity required to handle a pen and produce "joined-up" writing. Creating nice, even loops with a right-leaning slope was the ultimate goal so we were made to spend hours practicing, over and over again.

Today of course, cursive writing is probably a foreign concept to most school pupils. If they have to resort to "manual" techniques they'll simply use printing.

Of course because keyboards have become the number-one tool for recording stuff in text form, cursive writing is now just a curiosity and a legacy of a bygone era.

I suspect that only purists will mourn the passing of cursive script writing as a useful skill -- but what about the actual ability to read, write or do basic math?

NVIDIA boss Jensen Huang recently indicated that these basic skills may soon be redundant because AI will do things for us.

Yes, that's right, our interaction with computers will be essentially speech-based so there will be no need to manually write or type anything. Likewise, instead of having to read much more than basic words, AI-based computers will simply speak to us. Instead of reading a book, a computer will narrate it -- as is already becoming commonplace with the tsnami of AI-voiced dross on platforms such as YouTube and various audio streaming services.

As for maths, well counting to 10 may be about as far as you need to go, AI will take care of the rest. We've already seen a decline in our ability to perform basic math thanks to innovations such as calculators, spreadsheets and the like.

Once again, I recall having to learn how to use log-tables to perform long multiplication and long-division when a school pupil. Today of course, log-tables are nowhere to be found -- having been replaced by cheap calculators and computers. Some commentators believe that even the rote-learning of our "times tables" will soon become a waste of our time and unnecessary.

I'm all in favour of using technology to make life easier and improve our productivity but I'm also very aware of the huge vulnerabilities we're creating at the same time.

Imagine a huge CME or perhaps some other natural (or man-made) disaster effectively eliminating our expensive and complex electronic technologies. If the ability to read and write, the only remaining store of knowledge (books) would be far less accessible to us. In effect we'd have lost hundreds, if not thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom.

We really would be cast back to the dark ages.

Perhaps we should always remember that the technology that builds our strength also creates weaknesses.

Carpe Diem folks!

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