Tap... tap... tap...

It doesn't surprise me that electronic books haven't taken off, no matter how many times they're pitched. They are cool in concept but lacking in implementation. Reading a book is an intimate, tactile experience with specific visual cues (white space proportions, etc). Try to translate that to a monitor and you lose those things that make reading a book special.

Same goes for writing. Blogging and other electronic forms have clear benefits regarding sharing and distribution and back-ups and mass storage and such. And I am a much more efficient writer because I can type quicker than write long-hand, edit without blotches, cut and paste my or others' photos and quotes, and notice inaccuracies when I bother to turn the spell check on.

Still, there's a different quality to holding a pen and scritching out one's message in one's own handwriting on that white (or non-white) page. In fact, watch some time as your handwriting changes depending on what you are conveying and the emotion connected to it. Joyous looks different from angry looks different from sad looks different from bored looks different from curious. As holistic beings, we can't divorce the writer from the message... unless we go electronic. Maybe this is why so many people feel they can say things in e-mail that they wouldn't say to a person's face.

Today, I purchased a new journal for work and I'm kinda psyched to use it. What can I say? Scritch... scritch... scritch.