Letter writing may be poised to enjoy an unlikely revival
Would you notice if Royal Mail stopped delivering letters on Saturdays? Probably not, is my guess, for the simple reason that you hardly get any letters anyway, on any day of the week.
The thick flump of envelopes on to coir matting – one of the sensory pleasures of the pre-digital world – has been superseded, almost entirely, by the ping of electronic communication. The number of letters sent or received in the UK has fallen by 46 per cent over the past decade alone. Now Royal Mail wants to change the terms of its universal service obligation, to help shrink the crater in its annual budget.
The postal service is like the British pub: it’s no good bemoaning its decline when you never actually use it yourself. I am a devout believer in letter writing who, like most people, hardly ever actually writes a letter. Instead I communicate with friends and family by text or email, and with businesses via maddeningly circular conversations with online bots. It’s not optimal, but this is how the world works now.
Yet I suspect letter writing – like other analogue skills – will not die out completely. It may even have something of a revival, as the pitfalls of electronic communication become more evident. This week, for example, the National Cyber Security Centre warned that criminals are using AI to make email scams more effective. AI writing tools can produce phishing emails that sound (ouch – the irony) more convincingly human. They can eliminate the spelling mistakes and botched grammar that often set alarm bells ringing, and engage in lengthy conversations until the victim lowers their guard enough to click on the fatal link.
Digital communication has already made it easier to swindle money out of anyone – especially the elderly, the solitary, the technologically unsure and the merely trusting. Presumably this is one reason why the superrich (among them, of course, many tech billionaires) prefer to manage their finances the old-fashioned way: person to person. They still have bank managers – actual humans responsible for their accounts, like something from the 1950s – who visit them at home to discuss business, and can be phoned any time on their personal number, and yes, who send letters on thick, creamy, profoundly tangible notepaper.
Analogue communication like this has become a luxury item. It is desirable partly for its simplicity. A letter only does one thing. You open it and read it, and you don’t get sidetracked by an incoming ping or a funny reel. Your brain can move more slowly, concentrating, which makes you less susceptible to bad decisions. This is true in financial transactions, but also personal ones. You are more likely to misjudge your tone or casually cause offence in a quick text than in a laboriously handwritten letter.
Being able to concentrate on one thing at a time, without distractions, is an elusive feeling now. You have to actively create the right conditions for it. This may explain the surprising resurgence – especially among the young – of activities such as baking bread, reading paper books, playing board games or listening to vinyl records. Technology has never completely succeeded in killing them off, because it cannot replicate the state of absorbed concentration they provide.
Whether the same will be true of letter writing remains to be seen. But if we want to save the postal service from oblivion, now is the time to pick up our pens.