Will we ever stop typing

Last week's post about predictive typing concluded that our immediate future holds less typing - at least, less of the repetitive typing.  How could that be bad!

It stopped short of going the long haul, and that's what we're here for! So, will we type in the future?

Where will it lead?

Where are we today?

We've been at level 1 since the 90s, ushered in by Microsoft Word. Google Docs now has text and (soon) grammar correction too, but on a different level - like all Google products, it tries to understand what you are doing. You will get corrections, but it also knows what you are writing about, so it can offer related documents and research. It knows who you are, and what organization you're in and the way that organization talks. You still have to type yourself though.

What really made smartphone typing bearable (and allowed removing the physical keyboard from Palm and Blackberry days) was predictive typing. As AI improves and predictive typing becomes more accepted, level 2 is popping up in Gmail and Chat as well. It's still a lot of typing, but with assistance you get through it easier.

The core question: Which texts need to be crafted by humans?

To answer if handcrafted emails will become rare, we should think about what texts really need to be hand-written. Not all texts are of equal value and importance!

• Transactional messages ("Ticket #123 is waiting for your reply", "Holger shared a file with you", "Your order has arrived") are already fully automated. Google tries its best to receive them in an automated fashion for you (bundling read receipts, processing sharing requests, putting time-based information on your calendar). Honestly, you should not even see these messages. They should not even be sent by email.

• Routine messages ("Please don't forget to respond", "I'll be out tomorrow", "Please find our proposal") won't be missed too. Nobody likes typing these - great case for automation. G Suite is trying to make sending these messages easier (by suggesting full snippets) or by improving other services (Chat, Calendar, Docs) so that less back and forth is needed. These messages will likely be absorbed into these services entirely and live on as notifications, comments, tasks etc.

Update: The introduction of Dynamic Email will make those notifications more relevant in that you can interact with the apps behind the notifications from the comfort of your inbox. These are likely to stay around, but will become much more useful.

• Personal messages - If it is personal, should it be on email? I understand business hours, time zones, vacations, packed calendars, yet I think other tools like rich instant messaging and good old conversations will squeeze out personal messages too.

• Specialist texts (proposals, corporate communication, tutorials) will likely remain hand-crafted by professionals for a long time. Assisted, but handcrafted. G Suite easily covers the easier examples of this category (meeting minutes, spreadsheets, visualizations), but this goes beyond into the realm of graphic designers and type setters. Those professionals need specialist tools.