Notebook v/s Computer

I have been thinking for the last couple of days on how computers have changed us and how we do things. I'll leave the benefits and disadvantages debate for someone else but what I am really talking about is what have computers taken away from us that using notebooks afforded? I remember myself (seems like a long time ago) taking notes and drawing while listening to the teacher or reading a book. It definitely took more time but now that I think about it, there was an organic feel to the whole experience. I was actually embodying the concept that I was engaged in. When you think of it, writing and drawing are forms of gesturing. It's just that the level of abstraction is different. You are translating what the teacher is saying or what you are reading into textual and graphical form with certain kinds of hand movement. Now take the same activity and think about doing it using computers (laptops included). You translate those sayings and readings into textual or graphical representation with a series of button clicks and key presses. This will also count as gesture but something has changed here. It's a different mode of translation and you are making different body movements.

I remember my mom telling me when I was in school to "write it down to remember". And when I wrote things down, I did remember them better. What was happening? Did writing help make a new pathway in my brain?

Consider this as well, handwriting analysis claims that a person's personality can be gauged by looking at his handwriting. Hence handwriting serves as a window into a person's emotions, thoughts, basic nature and overall personality. That means handwriting is a way of expressing these dimensions about oneself. When you take that medium of expression away, does something change about the person? I have seen people say that their handwriting is not good as it used to be because they have been using laptops for a long time. So that means their handwriting has evolved (or rather devolved) as a result of using computers. If we continue with our chain of thought that handwriting is a window into a person's overall personality, does that then mean that the person has changed as well over time along with his handwriting?

I want to get back to that issue of embodiment again. When we write, we "feel" the words. We "create" the words alphabet by alphabet. When we are small, we learn to "create" the alphabets by writing them repeatedly. We then write words until we get them into our heads. Certainly something happened as a result of that act of writing things down. The only thing I can think of now is that when I am trying to learn a word, I see the word first. My brain processes the visual information. If I then say the word aloud, my auditory senses add to the visual information and reinforce the learning. If I go further and write it down, my motor senses provide another feedback and I'm guessing that reinforces the learning further. Instead if I just press the button 'a' on my computer, I have performed a different kind of motor activity which sends a different kind of signal back to my brain - when you press this button, you type 'a' instead of the message that you can 'write' alphabet 'a' like this...

I strongly feel that there is something very important to the act of writing that is missing when we type on our computers. One might argue that typing on the computer is faster and lets us engage in activities which require higher cognitive abilities. I don't disagree with them but we also need to think about what we take away from kids when we replace their notebooks with computers in this increasingly hi-tech world...

(Thanks to Matt for brainstorming :) )