Who writes nowadays?
In the era of speech to text, Alexa and Siri who writes nowadays? With celebrities, selfies is in and autograph is outdated. Who signs nowadays? With the wallets and bank accounts getting digital who even signs cheques?
What then is the fate of Graphology? If no one will write, how will the Graphologists analyse the writing and signatures?
Does that thought haunt you?
OK let me begin with a positive note. The recent Samsung Galaxy Note 20 boasts of its best feature that is the S Pen. The pen allows you to take notes on the screen even when the mobile is locked. It is claimed that it is the finest pen ever designed.
So, one message the leaders of technology are giving is that handwriting still remains the quickest way to express ideas when they come to you as a flash. This is also suggested by a research done by two psychological scientists, Pam Mueller of Princeton and Daniel Oppenheimer of UCLA
who compared the learning ability and academic performance of group of students who wrote by hand while taking notes in a lecture against those who used keyboard to make notes.
Their observations led to conclude that handwriting has a strong corelation with grasping and higher level cognituve learning. People who write notes while learning tend to write their own thoughts whereas those who type, tend to type word to word i.e. verbatim.
Although, there are many advantages of writing over typing, it is not necessary that mankind will move in the direction of its best interest.
Finland has already stopped teaching kids to write in the preschool. Some states of the USA also took this decision but later turned back to handwriting although they stopped teaching cursive now.
Researchers Marieke Longchamp and Jean-Luc Velay studied the ability of students of the age 3-5 years to recognise letters. They studied two groups, one who learnt to write the letter formations by hand and one group which learnt only to recognise letters by typing them. Those who learnt by writing were better at recognising alphabets. This same study was also done by them on adults underwent learning two scripts - Tamil and Bengali. The conclusion was the same.
All said, the question remains who writes nowadays? This question needs to be addressed by Graphologists.
Do people walk nowadays? No they don't need to but then you see hundreds of people getting up early and doing what? They are walking, walking for fitness. Do they need to walk because they don't have a better mode of transport? They walk because they have realised the importance of walking after they saw the effect of not walking. Doctors recommend walking for health.
Since people are walking for health they are using specially designed shoes and gadgets meant for walking and jogging. That's a new requirement. Did the footwear industry die? No, but it evolved.
What can we expect for the writing industry? Will people stop writing completely? Yes, if they don't realise that it is good for their health to write. Who should create this awareness? Graphologists have long known that writing is a way of communucation not only for the conscious mind but also for the unexpressed subconscious thoughts.
If a Graphologist can read subconscious thoughts and beliefs of the person from the writing, that is because the person is expressing it.
The next time you feel suffocated and bottled up, grab a pen and a paper and start writing anything. Who writes nowadays? Begin with yourself write a page full everyday for good health.
