From today's Globe and Mail:
Youngna Park is the last person you'd expect to be concerned about the demise of the handwritten letter. She'd be too busy firing off a few dozen text messages a day, pinging friends on Gmail chat, dealing with as many as 100 e-mails daily and keeping up her popular blog at Youngna.com.
But lately she's felt something missing among her broad network of friends. "It's becoming harder and harder to write a long, meaningful message to people," said Ms. Park, 24. "An e-mail is so impermanent, so insignificant in many ways. How can 100 e-mails in your inbox feel in any way significant?"
Ms. Park's remedy: the Modern Letter Project. Participants receive the names and addresses of 12 "snail-mail pen pals," and over the course of a year they exchange letters with their fellow nostalgists.
Within a week, after she and fellow blogger Corie Trancho-Robie, 29, posted a call for letter writers on their blogs, they had more than 150 responses.
Once considered a death knell for the handwritten word, the Web is now host to a score of projects focused on keeping the craft alive.
Link: You've Got Snail Mail.
The article also mentions other creative projects spawned by the web including the 1000 Journals Project, and the Wandering Moleskine Project. Who knew?
The end of the article's a bit sad, though:
Even so, Ms. Park doubts anyone will be persuaded to alter their electronic ways. "You can't opt out of technological change," she said. "We can't change how technology is changing us."
Hey, that's no kind of attitude to have! Yeah we can't totally opt out, but we can be mindful of how it's changing us and try to raise awareness of the concerns -- she's already off to a good start with this letter project.
Recent Comments