Nor will I even bother to open an email without a subject line.
OK, in fairness, I don’t use communications in general the way the 20-somethings (or less!) Facebook is trying to cultivate do; even with actual friends, my messages are more along the lines of “are you free for dinner next Friday?” than “Hey, I’m around, wanna meet up?”
Still, at the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy (after all, I am an old fuddy-duddy), there are very real virtues to old-fashioned email. You can convey a lot of information, if necessary — and it’s information that stays available in the archive. Plus, the lack of immediacy is, given the way I live, a virtue. In general, I can’t break what I’m doing to talk to you or text you; so an asynchronous form of communication, which I can respond to when convenient, is a huge advantage.
I don’t have much nostalgia for paper; although I think the discipline of limited space does wonders for your writing, that’s won’t be enough in the long run to sustain the dead-tree newspaper, let alone the traditional letter. But instant communication is not the future for everything.