Hu Yong | The End of the Written Word? Not Just Ye...

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Zhang is not alone. When people were first clamoring to establish mega forums for global communication, Clay Shirky, a prominent thinker in the digital tech field, put forth a persuasive argument that the internet would make us more creative — even with just a small portion of our “cognitive surplus.”

Clay Shirky’s two bestsellers: “Here Comes Everybody” and “Cognitive Surplus.”

Capitalizing on cognitive surplus will lead to mass amateurization — countless amateur posters beginning to produce and share original content.

Facebook is one of the best examples. On Facebook, everyone can be a creator. And for hundreds of millions of global users, it has become the preferred medium for sharing their opinions and life experiences. But a few years down the road, creativity may go in a very different direction. Facebook is convinced that text is already seeing its last days on the platform. Mark Zuckerberg is betting the future of Facebook on video, virtual reality (VR) and other forms of immersive experience.

Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, goes even further. She used statistics to argue that text is already one the cusp of being obsolete, having been largely replaced by dynamic images and voice messaging.

Mendelsohn has a preference for video communication: “The best way to tell stories in this world, where so much information is coming at us, actually is video. It conveys so much more information in a much quicker period. So actually the trend helps us to digest much more information.”

She, however, didn’t mention that compared with text content, videos increase the amount of time people spend on social media, and they are more likely to garner shares, comments and likes. Facebook’s business model depends on its users clicking, sharing and engaging with content, regardless of what that content is — memes, opinions, “feel good” stories, news or gossip — or in what form it appears — text, audio, short/long videos or livestreaming.

In short, Facebook is in the business of getting people to share the things that interest them. As long as people stay on the platform and engage with it, Facebook will see a host of commercial benefits.

Now let’s consider some WeChat data and one of Allen Zhang’s conclusions: “As time goes by, self-expression by video is becoming a habit among more and more people. In the last five years, the number of video messages that users send on WeChat each day has increased by 33 times, and the number of videos posted in WeChat Moments by 10 times.”

When you look around, it’s obvious that TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and other social media apps are blurring the boundaries between social media and entertainment, leading to fiercer competition over users’ time.

In such a battle, are words really becoming a stumbling block? Some studies have found that our brains process visual information 60,000 times faster than text, that visual aids can improve learning efficiency by up to 400%, and that video is seen as the most effective marketing tool.

When Mendelsohn was sharing her views about “the decline of text,” there was a moment when the room went uncomfortably silent. Many still consider writing a key building block of human civilization. Surely text should not be dismissed that easily.

Mendelsohn comforted her audience by saying that writing would not disappear completely. After all, “you’ll have to write for the video.”

“You’ll have to …”

It’s as if the written word is already in some strange stage of survival, like dinosaurs trying to eke out an existence on a rapidly warming planet.

Welcome to the post-text future?

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