When Will Penmanship Become an Anachronism?

Marc Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner, just blogged about how he found himself in a situation where he had to use pen and paper -- and realized he had nearly forgotten how to write.

Just a few weeks ago, I visited Helio CEO Sky Dayton at the company's HQ in Los Angeles. Sky got talking about how the younger generation communicates with their fingers -- typing text messages, shooting and sending video, conversing on IM. The cell phone is their personal life recorder. And if you go into many college classes, students sit at desks with their laptops open, taking notes by typing. Pen and paper are a last resort.

In fact, writing is moving into a dead zone in the fidelity vs. convenience equation. The fidelity of pen and paper is terrible -- hard to read and even harder to manipulate. You can't send it or edit it digitally. Until recently, it had the advantage of great convenience compared to typing or any other means of recording -- you can carry it easily, it doesn't require batteries or special knowledge to work. But these days, the convenience of a digital device is close to that of paper. Devices are small, portable, and increasingly easy to use.

Eventually, writing won't make any sense except when there's absolutely no other way to record something. The question is when that day arrives.

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