Email is dead
: OK, I exaggerate. But email is choking as a useful tool and we all know why. The topic comes up here at the blog conference and most of us grownups have hope and faith that there’ll be some technical (or legal) solution to the problem. I’m not so sure. I fear that email is becoming the bus station of online: the place you would rather avoid.
See this from Adam Curry on email and the future:
The BBC is running a story on the effects of spam on kids. As a father of a 13 year old, I can report that the next generation is probably going to leave email to the side. Weblogs and Instant Messaging are the tools of today’s kids. Christina only occasionaly uses her hotmail account to exchange messenger screen names.
: Yes, IM and blogs are killing all the old ways. Now David Galbraith points us to a story that says keyboards are killing cursive writing skills in kids.
I lead the way. I have the world’s worst handwriting. Even I can’t read it. I took typing after sixth grade; it was my own special special ed.
But now, thanks to computers, of course, keyboard skills far outweigh handwriting skills. We gave our son touch-typing lessons around first grade and his fourth-grade teacher begged his fellow students to do likewise.
Humans will soon develop extended right index fingers for touchpads.
The cursor will kill cursive.