Seth Godin says:

Cursive is a fundamentally useless skill in this century…

My immediate thought was “No it isn’t because it’s faster than print writing.” And I can take notes faster. Which is true. It’s faster than printing for me.

But is it faster than typing? For me they are probably about the same. For others typing is faster. But if faster is better, then why don’t we teach stenography? Why aren’t there stenographic keyboards on our computers?

OK, did a little research and found the stenography is a real pain the butt to learn – which is why there are schools for it I guess.

Then there is the whole Dvorak keyboard argument. And the cording keyboard argument.

So I guess cursive is useless if you learn to type or print really quick. But you do still need handwriting. There are a lot of places it is socially unacceptable to take a computer for the purpose of taking notes. For instance church. And there are places it is just a pain, like hiking. If you want to journal your deep thoughts at the top of a mountain, it’s better to have a paper notebook than a computer.