Writing (and reading) letters. Email brings speed - and brevity. But letters forced writers to be more...deliberate with their words. I'm currently reading a c

Writing (and reading) letters. Email brings speed - and brevity. But letters forced writers to be more...deliberate with their words. I'm currently reading a collection of letters from Richard Feynman - curated by his daughter, who weeded through file cabinets full of them, forwarded from Caltech's archives. One can chart the course of a life by the letters that person wrote. It makes me wonder - when all of us are gone, will someone publish collections of emails from our noteworthy contemporaries? I doubt it. Digital communications are fleeting. While they can more easily be archived than a drawer full of paper letters, they can also easily be deleted with a keystroke. Email and text communications offer many advantages, but they lack the weight of the written word - and the longevity.