In the olden days when I was very young it was the custom, upon receipt of a kindness from someone, to write them a thank-you note. This note took the form of a missive, hand-written, on personal stationery or a note card. The note was then taken to the post office and sent via that which we now call snail-mail.

Someone did me a kindness very recently. That is, they went out of their way to do something nice for me. And it seemed that just sending a tweet that said something like “hey thx that was gr8” did not truly express how touching I found their action.

With the advent of modern telecommunications such as email, and the subsequent growth of micro-format communications like Twitter, we have lost idea of sending a tangible token of our gratitude.

So today, for the first time in many years, I sat down and wrote a thank-you note using pen and paper. Then Trotsky and I walked up to the post office to send it off via snail-mail (using two stamps because I’m not sure how much it costs these days).

To send a tangible token of thanks rather than a digital one enables the recipient to perceive it with their various physical senses. For example, they can put the physical token on their desk or bookshelf, or pop it into their wallet and carry it around with them. These are things we cannot yet do reliably with our electronic communications at present.

Clearly since so much of our interaction these days is online it is often the best, fastest and most relevant way to communicate with people. But sometimes a tweet is not enough and this idea of sending thank-you notes might just be a new (but old) way of doing things?