I think it’d look something like this:
50 years: Textbooks mostly gone from schools in many developed countries. Paper might be used occasionally when tech isn’t working, but teaching will be done mostly on computers or tablets. Most kids will have “ugly” handwriting because of they rarely write. The devices kids use to learn might be provided by the school, or some schools school might require kids to bring their own as part of a back to school supplies list.
In the adult world, paper will be mostly gone except like militaries or certain government agencies where secrecy is important. Certain jobs where there are safety procedures to be followed will still have paper instruction manuals.
For the average person’s home, there will be no paper except perhaps a small amount of people who still carry cash. Privacy-concious people will still write on paper. Everyone else just use their phone notes app.
In developing/undeveloped countries, they will be mostly the same but lagged behind developed countries like 30 years.
100 years: Paper is near extinct. Schools no longer have paper except one or two packs of printer paper in the main office probably for redundancy. Tech mostly don’t fail anymore, so any paper probably has been sitting on a shelf somewhere for many years. There would be very few amount of paper left in the world. For security sensitive purposes, air-gapped tablets will replace paper.
From this point on, humanity will move towards a future without paper.
But that’s just my prediction, what do you think?
Thinking about the possibility of brain-computer interfacing is insane. It’ll be possible to shove a thought into your shopping list… convert your dream into a text file to edit and include in your book later.
I do think writing by hand is a good skill to teach at least until highschool… from then on, there should be more accessible ways of getting your notes down and organised - and also easy to search and re-organise.
It’s strange that after I tested out a couple of REALLY dirt cheap chinese pens to replace my old, trusty, fountain pen which got lost - this ended up with me having three transparent plastic pens (WingSung) that cost $2 each - and now my son has stolen one for school, filled with some Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue (every bit as nice as a blue EnerGel) but with a couple of ink-eradicator pens, he says it’s better and faster than using the alternatives (FriXion is way overpriced, and not nearly as nice as a proper GelPen - and the rest of the competition is just nasty).
I also use a double-edged safety razor to shave, and found out (when I figured it was something most folks just hadn’t thought about) that a few of my friends went there a year or two back… so many things should never need to die out, but obviously some things should be skipped…
Longer form (essays, dissertations, anything more than a page) is certainly a bit of a waste of time. I wrote a list of ‘to read’ books and stuck it up in my wardrobe, but the list changed… so now it’s digital and that paper got trashed.
Another 100 years should see more convenient and effective alternatives.