🖥️ How We Failed the First Digital Generation (The Dead Desktop Metaphor)

We rendered the physical world backwards incompatible. But it started with letter writing.

Feb 17, 2025

As I continue writing the series Teach Writing Tomorrow, I want to revisit some old works. In April 2024, just two months into the blog, I posted a two-parter on letter writing. Here I republish both pieces together along with a new post script about the desktop metaphor. Eventually, I’d love to revise and rewrite these ideas.

Even in 2024, while I focused on letters, I kept connecting them with other topics: reading analogue clocks, using dictionaries, using tables of contents, using indexes, counting change, knowing your address (for job applications), and so on.

As my Post Script explains, we moved forward without thinking forward. As computers became smaller and more embedded, we never thought about moving from physical tools to digital abstractions. It was natural. Yet using computers isn’t like using a toaster. Toasters don’t require conceptual shifts.

Going 1:1 meant we either taught the physical things first—as introductions to their digital counterparts—or we just explained the digital counterparts. Sadly, we chose neither.

1. Why Schools Should Teach Letters (April 2024)

Letter writing diversifies academic skills, enhances academic writing, introduces job skills, and builds valuable mental models. Too bad schools don't teach them.

Note: I will use "letters" and "emails" somewhat interchangeably. Also, read my post on feedback for letters and emails.

The Big Picture. As letter writing disappears, so do the benefits. If we only teach academic writing—specifically writing for testing—we narrow both writing ability and thought patterns. When we neglect other forms, either alien conventions arise or the medium becomes feral.

Standardized tests artificially constrain relevancy. If it's not tested, it's not relevant. Verboten even. This includes real world writing like job applications, envelopes, checks.
Without letter writing, everything becomes narrative or essay. Not everything follows those structures or conventions. Yes, emails have introductions, but not a paragraph with a thesis.

Teach media literacy through application. How are letters different than emails? Than essays? Than scripts? Practice each form then explain the contrast between them.

In Practice. How could teachers apply letters-emails in the classroom? Within the first weeks, introduce both mediums together and immediately contrast them. Then use them for templates and for reflection.

Students should practice drafting emails for everyday reasons—missed classes, missing assignments, questions on assignments, questions on grades.
Students should critique examples and learn common errors—not hitting "Reply," blank or vague subject lines, incorrect greetings and conclusions, and so on.
Students should write letters to their parents explaining their grades each term. Letters can also introduce and reflect on projects like portfolios.
Students should write an introduction letter for their first job. Of course McDonald's won't require them, but rehearsing for interviews will not hurt.

Other Reasons. Letters support communication, but they have other uses:

1. Jobs require letters. Job applications often require cover letters sent through email. Memos are letters. Legal documents are always written in response. Software evolves and new conventions arise, but some information and documents start from unchanging forms.
2. Slower writing, deeper thinking. Instant messaging (IM) works well for quick questions, but they are reactionary and unsuited for longer messages. When content grows, structure and longer mediums become necessary. Slower writing allows for deeper thinking. Deep thinking cannot happen in sound bites.
3. Letters support academic writing. Academic writing treats essays as letter. Scholars respond to research: critiquing, disputing, synthesizing, and so on. But this is a conceptual leap for younger audiences. They struggle. Instead, teach academic writing as an extension of letters. Essays just happen to have larger, less personal audiences.

Zoom out. Many pre-internet skills are considered irrelevant today. I'd love numbers backing this, but today's teenagers struggle with skills assumed for elementary children not long ago:

Many cannot read analog clocks or count change. Basic math facts—i.e., multiplication tables—require calculators.
Many cannot remember their own addresses, address envelopes, complete a job application (the basic information), or compose emails.
Many cannot search for information in books (using the table of contents, index, or glossary) or use dictionaries (understand alphabetical order).

Final Bell. What should we teach our kids today? A timeless education teaches timeless things. The desktop metaphor itself helped transition generations to the digital age. But what happens when these on-ramps disappear?

What if digital paradigms leave print culture unintelligible?
What if the impact is delayed? Who sounds the alarm?

2. Gen Z Hates Email (April 2024)

Letter writing has survived millennia. You just… learned it. But when mail became electronic, letter writing wasn’t taught. Now Gen Z doesn’t understand emails.

Review. Teachers should expand beyond tested-only writing and teach letters. Media literacy should mean practicing and contrasting media. The digital world was built as an extension of physical culture. When we lose that physical culture, we lose the tethers to the digital world.

Yes, but. “Why teach letters? That's archaic. Messaging is messaging. Embrace digital technology and teach kids what is relevant today…

After all, paper letters are obsolete. Why waste time learning a dead medium? It wastes valuable class time. Besides, it’s not even a standard.
After all, there's limited career relevance. Who sends physical mail today?
After all, if it's truly archaic, we should expect to see pushback, right?

'Cold Regards'. Gen Z does not like emails. At all. According to The Daily Mail, bosses have been forced to contact new employees through Instagram because young workers will not check their messages. While some cite intergenerational frustration with the medium, others describe their utter contempt for conventions. Why is this?

"The medium is the message." (Marshall McLuhan)

Type Here. Physical mail became electronic mail (email) and email became part of messaging interfaces. Conventions change, but foundations remain. If we neglect teaching communication, convention collapses into interfaces.

We underestimate—at our peril—how digital interfaces began with physical conventions.
Simply put: If we teach letter writing as a foundation, it becomes assumptions for emails. If not, other conventions (IM) fill the vacuum.
By contrast, instant messages (IM) best serve short ideas. Longer IMs begin to require structure and do not fit the flow of the medium. (IMs evolve into emails.)
Similar interfaces do not mean similar conventions. Handles are handles, but hammers are not screwdrivers. IMs and email may share interfaces—"Type here”—but they are distinct.

Between the Lines. Letters and emails as a unit have four common parts: the greeting, the body, the closing, and the signature. IMs as a unit have one part: the body.

While neither happens in real time (like talking face to face), letters trade monologues while IMs string together dialogues.
When writing letters, forgetting a part results in an incomplete message. Since the medium holds more information, responses are slower and paragraph driven.
When writing IM, forgetting a part does not exist. Since the medium holds less information (relatively speaking), responses are faster and sentence driven.

Phone First. Let's pretend you started with IMing instead of letters (emails) and adults skipped on teaching basic conventions.

Why write greetings when IMing includes names in the app?
Why write subjects when IMing assumes it in the thread?
Why add dates to letters when IMing time stamps?
Why include closings IMing never logs out? When the message body matters?
Why arrange messages into paragraphs when IMing is sentence-driven?
Why plan emails when IM is reactionary? Isn’t all messaging therefore reactionary?

Is it any wonder Gen Z hates email? It's instant messaging with extra steps!

Aside. When I teach letter writing and emails, I drill the following into my students: What is the obvious first question? How did you help yourself first? If you force your teacher to ask obvious questions, then you’ve wasted a message getting to the point.

“What did we do in class today?” Did you check the website/syllabus?
“I have a question about the assignment.” Okay. What did you try first?
“Why do I have a C?” Did you check your grades first?

So What? Who cares? So schools didn’t teach letters. Society didn’t crumble. Here are some other obvious questions:

Will letters and emails die? No. Letters-as-messages existed millennia ago and will exist in the future. But text boxes carry few if any conventions. Let's hope some remain.
Will Gen Z kill the email? Let's hope not. But apps may continue collapsing into similar interfaces. Text boxes have the capacity for longer messages, but users won't care.
Would the story change if letters were taught? Maybe. Digital culture may have developed on a similar trajectory regardless.
Will computers be useless without letters? Not at all. But interfaces use metaphors. Either they stay (and stay dead) or the language will evolve and be unintelligible to us. Not that it'll matter when we're gone.
Will new conventions be bad? Maybe not. But letters from millennia ago are intelligible. Teenagers do not use millennia (?) old conventions.
Do you send physical letters? I'm sorry, who's asking the questions here? It's that I can that matters. I write my share of recommendations. Now shoo!

Final Bell. When the halls clear, I can only worry about my own carpet square. But I worry when my students step outside the square. Writing structures are thinking structures. Letters have existed for millennia.

What if conventions became forced templates? What if apps somehow integrated that basic information? Would that force younger audiences to carry them into the future?
Students memorize complicated dance moves and badly lip synch to bewilderingly random clips. Why is slapping a greeting and closing on messages so difficult?

3. Post Script: Desktop Metaphor / Dead Metaphor (February 2025)

Hey! Did you hear the joke about the Gen Z student who found an old floppy disk?

The desktop metaphor served as easy transition to the digital world. Having grown up in the real world with physical mail, analogue clocks, dictionaries, making change, and so forth, we take the digital counterparts for granted. Digital tools made sense because we grew up touching their physical counterparts. We take this for granted.

For today’s teens, the desktop metaphor is a dead metaphor. Before they ever mastered writing letters, reading clocks, using dictionaries, or making change, we forced digital devices and proclaimed the physical skills irrelevant. You know, because of tech.

Except we never explained the technology. We just assumed they knew what we knew.

At best, the desktop metaphor served as transition. But we moved forward without thinking forward. This wasn’t the same as learning another electric appliance. Computers marked a conceptual shift. We abandoned physical tools for abstractions. So either the next generation should learn the physical tools or the abstractions. We choose neither. We left the first computer-raised generation to raise themselves.

If you spend enough time with teens, don’t be shocked they can’t do the following: read analogue clocks, write letters, address envelopes, use dictionaries, use tables of contents, use indexes, count change (or use similar math), and so on. When my eighth graders complete job applications, many don’t know their addresses, phone numbers, or basic information that elementary students knew just a short time ago.

It’s better to master the physical world before journeying through the digital world. By lack of design or forethought, our teens have mastered neither.

(I won’t even tread the waters of how screens rewire the brains!)

In August 2024, I wrote a piece called “Touchscreens are intuitive. Word processors aren’t.” In it, I explained the shocking problem of teenagers and computer illiteracy. Schools can’t go 1:1 without computers themselves as subjects. So I teach about files, creating folders, using word processors, and basic formatting. In person, I’m rather cranky about this: Our own computer illiteracy as adults becomes heritable.

📱 Touchscreens are intuitive. Word processors aren’t.

Adam

August 4, 2024

Read full story

And for the love of everything holy, simply navigating basic formatting options and knowing one or two keyboard shortcut shouldn’t make you a know-it-all.

If only my problems were isolated.

In 2021 Monica Chin from The Verge published one of the most important—and overlooked—essays and computer literacy. “File Not Found" describes how today’s college students can’t manage their own computer files—naming them, saving them, and so on. When asked where students saved files, they didn’t even understand the question. The concept of files, file types, and hierarchies came across as category errors. Rather than picture files and folders, kids function with a cluttered “laundry basket” metaphor.

It’s not just computer illiteracy, but students lack the mental models and hierarchical reasoning necessary to use computers.

If someone wrote a book about this subject, please let me know.

Back to letter writing.

Ever since the pandemic, I’ve expanded my writing repertoire to include writing across mediums with varying text structures. My students begin the year with letters and write two to three per nine weeks. But despite the practice, despite checklists, despite peer reviews, they still struggle. Even the kids who take AP classes just two or three years later.

Adding a basic greeting? Closing? Signature? Nah!

Each year students scoff at adding a signature, asking why they add their name since they wrote the letter. “I’m not writing the letter to myself!” they argue. Now picture that within an envelope. (Oof! Have to teach that one too.)

After two or three years, I just rewrote my grading rubric to award half credit for omitting any single part (greeting, closing, signature). It seems harsh, but has curbed the problem a least a little.

This connects to an entirely different issue: The standards-focused, test-focused, five-paragraph essay mono-diet. When students only write to satisfy tests, many write with the five-paragraph format only. (And barely, I might add.) When students ONLY write for standardized tests, the introduction, body, and conclusion become universal mental model. Even when writing letters.

“What’s my introduction?” No, you start with the greeting.

“What’s my conclusion?” Technically, yes, the body has one, but that’s a closing.

And, for the record, three paragraphs is not an essay.

When my folks moved back to the Midwest in 1996, I was entering second grade. And so I wrote my friends letters. So I wrote their name, I wrote what I wanted to say, then I signed my name. Simple. The page had the receiver, the message, and the sender. Yet what I mastered at six, my students struggle with at thirteen.

I don’t know what to do with that.

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