The Lost Art of Letter-Writing

Simon Garfield:

From Cicero to John Keats, Virginia Woolf to Jack Kerouac --how would these masters of the letter have taken to the inbox and junk folder? Would they have withheld their jewels of prose behind passwords and defunct operating systems? Would they have been cloud-savvy enough to pass on their attachments and YouTube links to future generations?

These aren't frivolous questions. We have grown used to the fact that we no longer write letters as we used to, but I'm not sure we have fully contemplated what this means to future generations. We love email, as we should--for its brilliant speed, its global reach, its free transmission of vast amounts of information. Its terrors (the cc'ed indiscretions, the "always-on" culture, the Big Brother scenarios) have not lessened its use. But how much have we really sacrificed on this altar of swiftness and efficiency?

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 21, 2013 1:11 AM
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