Alan Davies

Managers were briefed.

And the warning got filtered into a PowerPoint slide.

A badly worded warning.

Making it easier for decision makers to decide it's probably fine.

Fortunately, words usually build rather than break.

The light bulb didn't just stroll into your living room.

It arrived dragging a suitcase of patents, contracts and juicy headlines.

Written words are the meaning we make and the receipts for the life we've built.

Welcome to Life Without, where I pull a single thread from our magnificent world.

Something we take for granted just vanished.

It's my doing, of course.

No warning, no clever workarounds, just the unravelling.

How far will it run?

Can we stitch a patch and survive the wear and tear?

For BBC Radio 4, this is Life Without with me, Alan Davis.

And together, we'll find out if a life without writing ends up unpicking reality as we know it.

Dominic Wise is coming with me on this adventure.

He's Professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education at UCL and author of How Writing Works, From the Invention of the Alphabet to the Rise of Social Media.

And Nels Abbey, a British-Nigerian writer, satirist and author of The Hip Hop MBA.

Writing was revolutionary.