I’ve just been running futures workshop in Germany and one discovery is that people are losing the ability to write by hand. I’m not talking about kids either – rather professional 40-somethings and 50-somethings. You think I’m joking? The material that was written was almost unreadable. This chimes with my own experience whereby writing more than 3 sheets of A4 by hand causes noticeable aches in my hand.
So do I add handwriting to the extinction timeline?
Most certainly. I was going to suggest keyboards as well but even with perfect voice recognition it will probably not happen as it would make for very noisy offices with everyone yabbering away to their computers.
No, please leave it in.
In my experience, top level suits -almost to a man- have pretty awful handwriting anyway, so you’re sample group may not be that representive of the whole.
The ability to form signs is an essential part of our civilization. If we -one day- surrender our ‘fundamental’ ability to make our own signs, well I reckon we’d be totally finished.
I understand that cramped feeling is called ‘monk’s thumb’ in some parts of Italy . . . Many medieval manuscripts have various monk’s complaints scribbled in their margins. Perhaps calligraphy will see a renaissance as a response to ever growing homogeneity?