Discussions of digital communication (blogs, twitter, email, sms) in traditional media such as radio or newspapers can be predictable and unsatisfactory. Keeping Radio4 on for company & background noise, I caught how this morning’s Woman’s Hour invited writer Barbara Taylor Bradford and Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor of The Telegraph to have a short debate on “how important is letter writing in the digital age”; in practice a piece to be filed under “nostalgia” (twitter hashtag #mythofthegoldenage).

The discussion was unfortunately set up by the presenter as a false dichotomy from the outset. She asked, rhetorically, if anyone would ever fondly re-read a blackberry message ‘c u @ nandos’ as they would a handwritten love letter. But this is a case of not comparing like with like. All three agreed that more work, and thus more care, goes into fashioning a handwritten letter on beautiful stationery, but in comparison to what? A successful blogger will take great care and trouble over crafting their posts. I can agonise over my responses on public political blogs, even when posting under a pseudonym. I want to be fair, I want to get my facts right and I don’t like typos. Sentiments such as friendship and love can be expressed very well in an email and perhaps more legibly if one’s handwriting, after years of keyboard use, resembles that of a deranged monkey. The art of slow writing hasn’t died out merely because it is now done electronically. Championing the handwritten letter is a charming cause, but it needs not be done in opposition to digital writing. While the medium matters, and is, pace McLuhan, itself a message worthy of focus independent of content, it seems to me a futile exercise to construct a hierarchy of media. Especially if, predictably, older ones will score more highly, because of that human condition, nostalgia. Nostalgia is a kind of home sickness, a longing for the familiar, an understandable emotion, but not one which ought to be overindulged.

Our foremothers in the 15th Century might have similarly asked “wither the Illuminated text in the Gutenberg age”. And some of them will then have projected forward rather than glanced backward, visualising that the printing press might enable them to focus more on what is being communicated and less on how prettily it is presented.