Candy B
Re: In this day and age of email, listserves and higher
>technology, will the younger generations growing up with the stuff, save their
>messages?... Will they have no handwritten letters from "grandma"
for their children to find in a trunk...and dehuminization, loss of writers
skills, etc.

I find email a reenergizing force in getting people to write to each other.
I am writing to more people, starting with family, than before email.  And
forget getting someone under 30 years of age (OOPS, didn't that represent
the age of distrust when I was growing up?!) to write execpt in email, or
while catching them on your buddies list when logging on to aol.
I actually met, yes exchanged phone numbers and personally met, someone
clean and decent on a common interests bulletin board.  And don't you think
this funky BP forum is a paradise for frustrated writers?
Re saving evidence of communication... newspapers and even television are
catching on that later generations will want to "revisit" mundane
statements of today and are archiving materials.  OK who will preserve the
archive?
Most of this BP electronic dialog will and should be lost, just like oral
dialog, and won't need to be retold.
I trash 95% of what comes up on the BP inbox, forward some, hard copy some,
save some.  If I've been away and want to clear things up, I dump to a
"TempoPres-Bull" file on my desk top, sort of a special trashcan waiting to
be read or emptied.  I have a "Pres-Bull" folder there too for stuff I want
to save, like how to get off of the network when the time comes, and
notable postings and responses to my queries.  How long will I keep it?
Time will tell.
P.S.  If I said "Thank you!" every time I get good stuff from BP, I'd add
unnecessarily to the clutter...so consider this a BIG STANDING THANK YOU to
all who have illuminated and enlivened my tedious life.  I hope to tickle
your fancy once and a while in return.  --Jim