Is Writing a “Thing of the Past”? — 10 Reasons Why the Written Word Will Continue to Reach People’s Hearts
Hello, this is Ken Honda.
Whenever I hear people say, “In an era dominated by video and AI, hasn’t the value of writing already faded?” I feel like saying, “It’s only just getting started.” I want to share my excitement with you, as someone who loves writing, and explain why I think that way. Please enjoy this as if you were turning the pages of a book. I usually try to keep my writing natural, but this time, to convey the wonder of writing, I’ve intentionally added a playful touch and made it a bit more extravagant. Maybe I went a little overboard? Well, since this is a free article, please forgive me. I hope you understand it as my way of having some fun (laughs).
1) A medium that brings silence
On a commuter train, just by taking off your earphones and scrolling through a screen, the noise of the crowd fades into distant ambient sound. The rhythm of following the text is like a metronome that regulates your breathing. The white space between the lines provides a blank canvas for meditation, and even after you close the page, the tranquility that remains in your heart is like the feeling after taking a deep breath in a forest. Even if notifications go off, if you are immersed in writing, you barely hear them, and this inward-looking time helps center your mind. For the writer, the sound of tapping on the keyboard is like the striking of a bell in a Zen hall, and the habit of making silence your ally might even turn the noise of daily life into background music. (Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration.)
2) A private gym for training your imagination
Every time you follow the text, the projector in your brain automatically starts up, and the single phrase “red umbrella” conjures up a different shade of red for everyone. The white space between the lines is a DIY blank space, and you could say the reader is a craftsman who builds the story using their own memories and senses. The feeling of your brain creaking when reading a difficult book is, in a sense, a growing pain similar to muscle soreness. Whether it’s the short verses of a haiku or the long voyage of a novel, it’s fun to think of them as different workout menus for your brain. The imagination you train this way can also be applied to your work. You can use it to generate ideas in meetings or draw blueprints for the future. It truly becomes a reliable “creative muscle” and an intangible asset for you.
3) Freely controlling the temperature of emotions
Writing is like a “fireplace” where you can freely control the heat of the flames. Sharp verbs raise your heart rate, while an ellipsis “…” cools the air down significantly. Using many hiragana characters makes it as soft as steam, while layering katakana words can make it as cold as a city night breeze. Just by adding a single period, boiling water turns into lukewarm water, and readers can choose the optimal psychological temperature using the remote control of their scrolling speed. The writer adjusts the sentence endings by imagining the reader’s body temperature, and the story is customized to “your specifications” as the reader senses the temperature difference between the lines. Perhaps this writing has become a bit too colorful, but that just goes to show the potential that writing has!
4) Live art created in collaboration with the reader
You could also say that writing is not a finished product, but art that presents a wet canvas. The reader’s experiences and memories overlap with the foreshadowing secretly placed by the author, generating new scenes. In one reader’s mind, it might be raining, while in another’s, the same scene might be perfectly sunny. The impressions left after reading are the script for the finale written together, and in the comments section, fan fiction begins. As a work goes through multiple editions, annotations increase and it matures, and the number of endings multiplies by the number of readers—writing can become an art form that never grows old. How much you can stimulate the brain hormones of the person reading depends on the author’s skill, though...
5) A portable time machine that folds time
If you read a chapter of a history book, you can race through thousands of years in an instant, and you can also trap eternity in the seventeen syllables of a haiku. The immersion zone while reading is a black hole where time evaporates, and the act of folding a page is like placing a bookmark on a timeline. If you re-read it, the afterimages of your memories are played back like time codes, and you can reunite with your past self. A paperback book is a time-travel device lighter than VR, and the habit of using spare moments to travel between the past and the future will surely allow you to save time and play back your life at double speed. One of the joys of being a writer is being able to deliver a message across eras.
6) A library that fits in your pocket
An e-book reader is a folding bookshelf, and even if you put a thousand books in it, it weighs only a few hundred grams. If you put it in airplane mode, the inside of a plane quickly turns into a “private reading study,” and you can even read in subway tunnels. With an electronic ink device, it will last for weeks even if you forget to charge it while traveling. Highlights synced to the cloud automatically generate a “mental notebook of excerpts,” and if you use the text-to-speech function while walking, you can even read with your ears. In this way, a library that fits in your pocket becomes the ultimate subscription for learning and entertainment. Writing really is the best, isn’t it!!
7) A robust format that reaches 100 years into the future
More than half a century after the birth of the personal computer, emails can still be read today. Digital text is easy to replicate and does not degrade; just as inscriptions on stone monuments remain for a thousand years, text also becomes historical material for the future. Even after the writer passes away, their writing continues to update like an agent, conveying thoughts and emotions to descendants more accurately than a family tree. Writing with a timestamp becomes a treasure map for future researchers, and the line I just wrote, “Hello to you in 2125,” might actually reach the future. Would you like to write something for your great-grandchildren you haven’t met yet?
8) Best friends with search engines
Just by tidying up an article title, search traffic can double. FAQ-style articles are easily chosen by Google, and archives deliver value 24 hours a day like a vending machine. Even in an era where audio and video have subtitles, text remains a step ahead in terms of searchability. The page appears at the moment a reader is in trouble, and upon resolution, a grateful “like” is dropped—writing that becomes friends with search engines can be called a salesperson that never sleeps. Since I will be making this multilingual, your content has the potential to spread all over the world.
9) Zero cost, infinite returns
A blog is the first step in a zero-cost startup, and even if you fail, the only cost is the domain fee. With Kindle, printing and shipping costs are zero, and there is no need to worry about inventory. You can increase your unit price by re-editing popular articles into online courses, and a 'three-story' model is possible where you turn a series into a book and then into a seminar. If you grant translation rights, you can earn royalties from overseas editions while you sleep, and writing skills are welcomed in companies as the core of content marketing. Passion and persistence are your greatest capital, and the fun of the writing business is that you become profitable while you are absorbed in writing.
10) In the AI era, 'fluctuation' becomes the brand
If AI-generated text is like uniform tofu, human writing is like a hot pot with many ingredients (is that a strange analogy!?). You can even enjoy the texture of occasional bones—typos or tangents—as charm. Readers sense the living writer in the temperature of the first line, and accept 'fluctuations' like self-deprecating jokes, dialects, and rhythmic quirks as a brand. In hybrid production, where you leave the drafting to AI and pour your soul into it as a human, the value resides in the final 5%. Since readers are purchasing 'you' at the same time as the content, leave your sweat marks and breathing clearly, and deliver your fluctuations as a signed proof.
Conclusion
Writing is not a 'dead medium,' but an 'ongoing compass.'
Today, too, please hit the keyboard and send your unique rhythm and fluctuations out into the world. Believing that that one line will bring someone's dawn just a little bit closer. I wrote this in a deliberately over-the-top style, so please laugh. But, writing is truly the best, isn't it? Please write your opinions in the comments section.
I will continue to support you from the bottom of my heart as you keep writing.