Before I learned to touch type, I had managed to get pretty fast (I would estimate maybe 20-40 wpm) using a primitive hunt and peck technique. I more or less knew where they keys were, so I could use both hands and multiple fingers to type, but I needed to switch from looking at the screen to looking at the keyboard in order to not make mistakes.
After learning to touch type (on an electric typewriter - not a word processor), I probably tripled my speed, but the biggest advantage was being able to stay in context by looking at the screen instead of switching between the keyboard and the screen, and being able to fix mistakes while I was typing instead of having to go back and fix them after looking back up at the screen.
Of course, this was all pre mouse/gui, when memorizing and using keyboard shortcuts was not just a way of speeding up your workflow, but a requirement for basic functionality unless you wanted to continuously have the reference card taped to your desk.
In today's world, with continuous autospell correction, word and sentence completion, and even automated message reply suggestions... you can argue that actually typing as a form of communication is starting to become as antiquated as handwriting. The human is now more of a middle manager to all the machine tools, trying to put their individual stamp on the work of their electronic underlings (including LLM output).
Up until now, communication between humans was still a necessary and valuable skill. What happens when it is just bots writing memos to be read and summarized by other bots? I've already run into problems with people just refusing to read things and wanting meetings instead. Meetings don't scale, but apparently reading is just too hard... In that context, does it still make sense to put your skill points into writing things when people refuse to consume that output?
