Please Mr. Postman

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Over the years, I have penned my fair share of letters: notebook pages filled with tales to childhood pen pals; homemade birthday cards for family and friends; love letters, which were by far the best legacy of a certain failed relationship; unsent letters, written simply for the sake of processing thoughts and later burned. Some of the most meaningful 'conversations' I've had--be it a brother's updates from college or personalized limericks from my dentist--are stowed in a shoe box. For me, those letters represent a very personal link to the past, and it's troublesome to think that the future may not hold a place for this romantic art form.

Once the mainstay of communication, the letter is now slowly fading away. The advent of e-mail has afforded folks the luxury of immediate responses and instant gratification. Simple queries can be answered in mere minutes, and communication has evolved into a more streamlined and efficient process. But what sort of charm and character can one infer from an e-mail filled with goofy emoticons and acronyms in 12-point Times New Roman? Are people really printing and preserving keepsakes from their inboxes? We've lost the sentiment in real letters, the idea that the sender cared enough to put in a little effort--at least 41 cents worth. There's no legwork involved in an e-mail, just a few keystrokes and a click of the button. It's doubtful that, years from now, relatives will uncover passwords and log in to e-mail accounts to riffle through sent items, nor would it have quite the same heft as a packet of handwritten letters.

The impact of the fading of this art reaches beyond personal relationships. Historians have uncovered and studied correspondence between great thinkers throughout history. In Physics World (Jan. 2007), Robert P. Crease identifies several important historical moments in science that would have been lost without the written documentation of informal letters exchanged among scientists. Crease worries that future historians of the e-mail era 'will be unable to use letters and telegrams to establish facts and gauge reactions to events.' He posits that clues regarding character, leadership style, and thought processes are more easily discerned from letters, and he notes the troubling subject of preservation. Even the National Archives is swamped in its self-described 'daunting' effort to preserve data--in both pre- and postelectronic formats.

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