Within some decades, text-to-speech and speech-to-text will make it unnecessary for the average person to know how to read and write. Reading and writing as we know them will be limited to a fraction of the population that engage in high-level symbolic manipulation. Literacy could go back to 12%, especially as a myriad of mundane administrative jobs are obsoleted by AI.
You know those long treadmills at airports that you walk on to move faster through the concourse? They have speakers at either end constantly repeating a warning that the end is coming and to watch your step.
The written word is still optimal for education and we will continue to teach it.
Even it it were feasible to get by without reading it would take 50 years for this change to happen and in between a and b the groups that allowed this would be out competed for resources by those less stupid.
