Mathematical notation has been chosen, or developed over time, because it is highly efficient at communicating a huge amount of information in a short amount of space. It is almost as if the natural tendency of mathematical notation is to act a as a space-saving algorithm; the information content to notation ratio in mathematics is extremely high.

Most attempts to communicate this notation to computers has been difficult at best, with MathML being much too complex for humans to actually write, and LaTeX often requiring much looking up of the various short cuts that been developed, particularly for beginners.

Here's an example of some LaTeX to produce a mathematical diagram.

\png \definecolor{blueblack}{RGB}{0,0,135} \color{blueblack} \begin{picture}(4,1.75) \thicklines \put(2,0.01){\arc{3}{3.53588}{5.8888}} \put(.375,.575){\line(1,0){3.25}} \put(1.22,1.375){\makebox(0,0){\footnotesize$ds$}} \put(.6,.5){\makebox(0,0){\footnotesize$x=0$}} \put(3.36,.5){\makebox(0,0){\footnotesize$x=\ell$}} \dottedline{.05}(1.0,.575)(1.0,1.10) \put(1.0,.5){\makebox(0,0){\footnotesize$x$}} \dottedline{.05}(1.5,.575)(1.5,1.40) \put(1.5,.5){\makebox(0,0){\footnotesize$x+dx$}} \put(1.22,.65){\makebox(0,0){\footnotesize$dx$}} \dottedline{.04}(0.6,1.12)(1.25,1.12) \put(1.0,1.14){\vector(-1,-1){.45}} \put(.58,0.83){\makebox(0,0){\footnotesize$T$}} \put(.77,1.05){\makebox(0,0){\scriptsize$\theta(x)$}} \put(1.18,1.16){\makebox(0,0){\scriptsize$\theta(x)$}} \dottedline{.04}(1.5,1.41)(2.1,1.41) \put(1.5,1.44){\vector(4,1){.67}} \put(2.22,1.59){\makebox(0,0){\footnotesize$T$}} \put(1.95,1.45){\makebox(0,0){\scriptsize$\theta(x+dx)$}} \end{picture}

Can you tell what the final output of this LaTeX will be? (See http://www.forkosh.com/mathtex.html for the answer)

What juiceandjuice said. The transition costs (in terms of re-educating people and re-writing text books) is far too high for the moderate benefit of bending our notation to the limitations of 2012 computers. Instead, this problem will be solved by things like mathematica, tablets, and the math handwriting recognition software which appeared on HN the other day:

http://webdemo.visionobjects.com/equation.html?locale=defaul...

Yes, it will be. Your question is the equivalent of asking if English will still be written the same in 30 years.

would "u r wrong" have been understood as easily 30 years ago as today? Language change, even 30 years is enough for some changes to happen. Now I'm not saying that 30 years from now we will be talking in im speak but you can't deny that english of today has changed in the last 30 years.

Mathematics has also changed over time. Trying to read mathematics documents from Fermat's period would be rather hard today. In the 20th mathematics saw some pretty drastic changes in the way it's expressed (someone can correct me if I'm wrong on this). Check out this group who had some pretty big influence on how math is expressed today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki

Being symbol agnostic is acceptable, even expected, once mastery is accomplished. Dealing with both forms (computer and paper) while learning can be challenging - possibly enough to be a turn off altogether.