Text will continue to hold the actual content of reading. Only when the technology has caught up with Star Trek will the merging become complete. Thanks to my classmates I have slightly reevaluated my stance on image and text becoming one. While I still am confident of a reunification, I understand the text will never just go away. Image and text will be used to the same extent for transmitting information, and they will act together with the opportunity to be separated, but they will not be separated because together they truly tell the story to a wonderful degree, something that cannot be done alone, yet.
Advertisements are possibly the best examples of image and text being mostly the same thing.
Sometimes the text is large and without accompanying images other times the opposite is true. They all work together to sell products. Take a look at nearly every consumer product. They all have names and symbols. There is something out there that will represent everything, from the simple Nike Swoosh to animated entrances to web sites, varying in amounts of pure image and or text in each respective symbol.