The lost art of the handwritten note

When was the last time you ever received a handwritten note ? (And no, I don't mean one of those yellow Post-It with somebody's scribbles either). When was the last time you ever wrote a letter using a pen, or received one ?

It struck me the other day that we live in an age of de-humanized communications, where the medium reflects little about the person. We have the ubiquitous QWERTY keyboard at our fingertips, email and its many variants such as MSN Messenger, we have mobile phones, pagers and wireless PDA devices, we have Microsoft Word attachments, we can insert smiley icons, and we have fax and video-conferencing. Yes I agree, it's so very convenient and almost effortless to use what current technology has to offer, but have we lost something in the process ?

When I think of friends and family, both past and present, of passing acquaintances and strangers, I am struck by the fact that I hardly read anything by them that was actually handwritten....I kind of view this as a lost opportunity to see a uniquely personal facet of their character, of their soul, something that may have revealed to me some aspect of themselves which I never knew. There is something different about putting pen to paper - I can't quite figure it out - but it feels more personal, almost intimate, when you express yourself this way.

Thoughts ?