Why technology will make language learning obsolete

I've been thinking a lot lately about how technology is moving at such an incredible rate.

For someone who loves change, it's really exciting.

But I believe it will eventually make my own business, Mountlands Language School, and foreign language learning, obsolete.

Consider for a moment, all the amazing technological advances that have changed the way we live over the past few years:

1. The way we watch television. Does anybody actually watch 'live' tv any more, unless it's sport or Eurovision?
2. The way we pay for stuff. A couple of years ago it would have been crazy to think we could pay for anything with our phones. How long before cash and cards are a thing of the past and we can pay with our eyeballs?
3. Having a really powerful computer on our person at all times. Remember when you needed a paper map? Or a calculator? Or a separate camera?

And we are extremely close to self-driving cars, shops with very few staff and no checkouts, and computers with greater intelligence than we can imagine.

So with all this fast-paced change, it made me wonder how it would affect my industry - the English language learning industry.

It makes me think of the quote - 'if you can imagine it, you can create it' by William Arthur Ward.

Consider the following scenario:

If I said to you I want you to give a presentation in Russian in one year, and I will pay you £1,000,000 if it's perfect, and there were two options:

1. Spend every day for the next 12 months learning Russian - you'd probably need up to 12 hours a day.
2. Or you could buy a cheap device that you slotted into your ear which allowed you to speak in your own language but it would translate it (in your voice) into perfect Russian. It also meant that you could understand Russian perfectly, as it translated it into your language instantly.

Some people who love language learning, might take option 1. But I reckon most would just go for the easy option 2.

For most people, language learning is not a passion, it's a necessity to help them get a better job.

If you gave these people a different option, the long, laborious, and frankly boring task of learning a foreign language would be completely obsolete.

A bit like learning shorthand is today, or Latin.

Sure, there will always be some people who still want to learn Latin - but really, it's not a great market to be in.

They wouldn't even teach foreign languages in schools any more. What would be the point?

So I believe the question is not 'if' this is going to happen, but 'when'.

Could be 100 years time.

Could be 50.

Could be 10.

At the rate everything is moving at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised to see something on the market in the next 2-3 years.

So what will happen to all our language schools and agencies and subsidiary businesses?

What should we be doing now to future proof our industry?

I'd love to hear your comments and views on this.