the death of typing

the keyboard may soon become a relic—leaving us to ponder what we gain and what we lose in this silent revolution.

I noticed something funny this weekend—the 11-year-old daughter of my neighbor was dictating a message to her phone instead of typing it. This might not have been remarkable except for the fact that she was sitting at her desk, hands free, in a perfect typing position. It got me thinking about a soon-to-be world where we might be witnessing the beginning of the end of typing as a universal skill.

I remember the first time I laid my hands on a keyboard—probably around 1995. The joy of being able to express my thoughts beyond paper was exhilarating. Back then, the speed of typing dictated the flow of ideas; thoughts had to queue in my head, waiting to match the pace of my fingers. Slowly, as I improved, the sync between my thoughts and the appearance of words on the screen felt almost magical. Until a few years ago, typing was the only way to communicate with computers. The idea of simply speaking to them felt possible but not imminent. Funny how now, not only can you speak to them, but they often understand you better than most humans.

Voice interfaces are improving exponentially, while typing has remained largely unchanged. It’s no longer just about dictation—we now see AI generating entire podcasts, audiobooks, and video content. The keyboard is beginning to resemble what the command line became in the 1990s: a specialist tool rather than the default interface.

Some might call this absurd. “We’ll always need to type!” they might argue. But that’s exactly what people said about memorizing phone numbers or performing mental arithmetic. Technologies rarely vanish entirely; they just become niche.

This transition could be particularly significant for the next generation. Why learn to touch type when you can speak five times faster? Typing may soon become like cursive writing—something older generations know but isn’t taught anymore because it’s no longer essential.

There’s an irony here that wouldn’t be lost on early computer pioneers. They spent decades making computers understand human language, only to create a future where humans might forget how to communicate with computers in their original language.

The real question isn’t whether this will happen—it likely will—but what we’ll lose in the process. Typing isn’t just about speed; it’s about the unique relationship between thought and text, about the peculiar way ideas crystallize when your fingers are doing the thinking.

Maybe in a couple of decades, when my grandkids ask me what typing was like, I’ll explain it the way my parents explained rotary phones to me. Perhaps some of them will even become retro-typing enthusiasts, collecting mechanical keyboards or vintage typewriters like artifacts of a bygone era.

Sigh.