I think this take is wrong and here are some words about it! (1/x) nytimes.com/interactive/20…
New forms of media are often additive, not replacements! All the evidence we have says that the arrival of smartphones has, on net, meant we consume MORE total media than we used to. They don't murder a typographer every time there's a Snapchat update.
When new forms of media *are* subtractive, there's no particular reason to think text will be what goes away. The piece talks about the rise of podcasts — which are great, but which replace *radio* and are usually consumed in contexts where reading is hard (driving, doing dishes)
Netflix and YouTube are livestreaming are great! But they're primarily replacing something called traditional TV — maybe you've heard of it? 
Why is it that the default way to make news or news-like video online is to slap text captions on top of the moving images? Because a huge amount of video consumption happens with the sound off, where text is an awesome way to transmit information.
(At the risk of being facile, the Times story was written in...text! Not a podcast, not a video. Because it wouldn't spread as far in those formats and because you can read this set of ideas more quickly than you can hear/view it.)
Why did Instagram just add a new type mode to Stories? Because almost everybody adds text to their Story visuals in some form or another! theverge.com/2018/2/1/16956…
Voice UI like Alexa are great, but how much of what we do with them is actually replacing text? Most of what they do today is replacing *interfaces*, which include text and visuals, not text itself. ("Set an alarm," "play my playlist," "what's the weather," etc.)
It always feels like these "post-text" manifestos are written by word-loving information workers (raises hand) who have somehow forgotten that TV ate up a ginormous swath of human leisure time *decades* ago.
There are lots and lots of things that video or audio does really well, much better than text! There's a reason we spend less time reading novels and more watching HBO than our grandparents.
But there are lots of things that text does really well too, and I don't expect that to stop anytime soon. Text allows for quickly produced and quickly consumed information density. Most things we type would not be productively replaced by a picture or a video!
Anyway, enough harrumphing from me, but I just think it's silly to frame text and visuals as a zero-sum game. Video is clearly on the rise! But we write and consume more words today than ever before in human history, thanks to technology. That won't all #pivot anytime soon.
