I have no idea what this question has to do with faith, except that everything involving computers has become a form of faith in our society. As it happens, I have a good deal to say in my new book, "The Age of American Unreason," about email as an enemy of conversation--both the spoken and written variety, once known as letters. I am traveling and filing this entry by email, and it's a great convenience. On the other hand, I had to wade through a dozen junk emails (offering a new form of "manhood enhancement" and a cut-rate trip to Costa Rica, among other goodies) before I even got to the "On Faith" question for the week. In the past, I would have simply filed my response by phone without ever having to think about enhancement of any kind.

Email is essentially an information-oriented form of communication, and (although there are exceptions) people rarely use email for the discursive, revelatory form of writing that used to be contained in letters from friends and lovers. A few years ago, I came across a cache of letters from 1968, when my fiance was stationed in Africa as the correspondent of The Washington Post and I was working as a reporter for the Post in Washington. These letters brought back a whole world of emotion and experience that time had blurred. They not only made me remember what it felt like to be young and in love but they offered a personal, often directly observed chronicle of the events of 1968, including the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.; the riots in Washington; the murder of Robert F. Kennedy, and the blood flowing in the streets of Chicago at the Democratic National Convention. Our letters covered both sides of the thin sheets of paper that used to be used for air mail and ran to dozens of pages a week. I'm sure if there had been email then, we would have been in daily communication--but I'm equally sure that the communications would not have been filled with the detail of our letters.

The end of letter-writing began with the dropping of long-distance phone rates in the late 1960s, and email has finished the job. I have no idea of how biographers will capture the true character of their subjects in the 21st century, because email (which can never really be considered private) has encouraged us all to stay in touch without truly communicating.

I have been accused of being a technophobe, but that's not the case. I simply think that all of us (myself included) need to take a close look at how much time we're devoting to digital exchanges instead of to messy, direct involvement with other human beings