diarRHETORICS.com

commentary: the decline of the personal and the letter

so i was thinking the unthinkable that  maybe we are missing something personnel or is it personal i never really got the spelling and which one was which, but anyway are we personnel or impersonal
are we spectators or spectacles in our own minds - and has the crafted letter vs the uncrafted and uncrafty email led us to be more personal or is it impersonnel - my best suspect for this is jeff pulver who is always on even when he is not on - hmmm - his email missives are like oh-missives and oh-missions and who knows all that goes on between the short bursts of jeff’s attention deafening or is it attention deficit mind or maybe the decline is actually an incline to be or not to be that is the question and i think as jeff sass has brilliantly pointed out is it vanity or insanity and i would like to chime in - chime - ok ok  so here is the thing is we via email more us or less us the post-off-us wants to know and inquiring minds too - g-oh

P.S. and below is the article that stimulated this i think ?

————————- 

The Decline of the Personal Letter
Poynter  online Al Tompkins
Al’s Morning Meeting
 Here is a question; Did e-mail lead to the decline of the personal letter?
Personal correspondence has been declining for 15 years, but when did this
decline start? It began when telephones became common, according to a nice
piece
(http://www.masslive.com/news/topstories/index.ssf?/base/news-2/119425260820
5910.xml&coll=1)  from  The Republican  in Springfield, Mass.

The paper reports that despite e-mail and the Internet, mailbags are as full
a ever — just not with letters:
  And to make matters worse, the volume of so-called standard
mail, including catalogs and other advertising, is on the
increase.

  “Our research shows that personal correspondence has
been declining for about 15 years. Personally, I think
it’s a tragic loss. I enjoy getting a letter,”
said Gerry J. McKiernan, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal
Service.
  “In your mail on any given day, if there is a
personally addressed letter, it’s either the first
thing you open or the last. It’s never in the middle.
It’s the last if you hold off because you want to savor
it,” he said.
  Postal Service research found that the average household
now receives just one personally addressed letter a week,
including such things as holiday cards and wedding
announcements, McKiernan said.
  “However, the decline didn’t start with the
Internet. We track the beginning of it to the decrease in
the price of long-distance phone calls,” he said.
  According to the Postal Service, first-class mail,
including personal letters and bills, peaked in 2001, when
there were 103.6 billion individual pieces delivered. In
2006, there were 97.6 billion pieces delivered.