Will the next generation write?

Will the next generation need to bother to write? 

This is a serious question. With the major advances in speech to text recognition it has to be asked whether anyone will need to actually put pen to paper or fingers to word processor in the future. That's not to say that we shouldn't have to read, reading is entirely different from the writing process, on the other hand does the one depend on the other? 

  It's not as though this is a brand new idea. Dictation to a secretary was, for many years, much faster for business communication than writing something out by hand and passing it to the typing pool, does anyone remember typing pools? But it wasn't only business, Winston Churchill dictated his speeches, many of the aristocratic writers had secretaries who they dictated to directly, although few  managed the kilograms of book weight each year of Barbara Cartland. 

So who does write these days? Or, to put it another way, who is likely to continue writing in the next 20 years if speech recognition software gets that much better? For writers the first draft is probably scrappy anyway so speaking it and making some minor alterations on the way is probably going to be just about as perfect as would be done by typing it, but without the hassle. It could even be true that the first draft is better if it is spoken, because we are always advised to read our work out loud to see where it doesn't work properly. Like what that didn't. 

There are dangers of course. Predictive text can be a curse to a writer. Consider Shakespeare's famous line " out damned spot". Would he have allowed "clear up this despicable Mark"? Or, the three witches," fire burns out the Hubble". On the other hand, predictive text might inject more sense into some of President Trump's tweets. 

But let's look forward to the new generation of school children. Already they have exams where all they have to do is tick one of four boxes to answer. Why bother with written tests? Surely it would be easier to let them dictate an answer, and will probably improve their ability to speak English that other people can understand. So imagine a classroom where the teacher says "please hurry up and speak" rather than "be quiet". 

But, whoever does the writing they will always have to edit it afterwards, so I suppose it's a bit like maths, if you don't have any idea of what should come out of a calculator it's a waste of time having a calculator. In either case a dot in the wrong place can change the whole meaning. 

We are not there with voice recognition. I wrote this using a free programme, and had to revise nearly every sentence.

Which side of my fence do you fall on?