Introduction

Beginning of article

Just hours before midnight this past December 31, I celebrated the receipt of an email from a dear friend of mine in Europe. How good it was to see his "Happy New Year 2010" on the screen! He went on to write, however, that it is a sad state of affairs when, rather than a human voice, or even a human script, it is an electronic mail that conveys such well wishes. Perhaps I would once have considered his comment nostalgic, something akin to Heidegger's lament of the overtaking of manuscripture, in its essential bond to speech, by the typewriting machine. Yet, after reading my friend's message, I took from the shelf a book he recently published and sent me--inscribed in his-only script. …