Estimated Reading Time: 3 – 4 minutes

It actually costs for us to lose fountain pens.

Think of the everyday-carry of a college student. A laptop, a cell phone, and an iPad might be a cherry-on-top. Few people carry pens anymore. As classrooms and workspaces go paperless, we use pens only in some exams, which are also slowly being replaced by digital devices. Fountain pens seem to be irrelevant in terms of efficiency, the lubrication in the intricate gears of modern society, but where haven’t they disappeared yet?

Most of the time, when completing a formal document, from monthly bills to agreements between nations, we still expect it to be physically signed by both parties, and that’s when fountain pens prove their worth. Bigger names often use fancier pens, and those produce bolder handwriting. It’s like a silent way of declaring, here, this person who signs, matters!

Penmanship encourages personal expression. There exists a saying in Chinese calligraphy that’s almost identical to what French Mathematician Buffon said, “The style is the man himself”. Since I started practicing this art at age 6, countless examples have proven this truth. One of the most famous calligraphers in history, Wang Xizhi, boasted a suave and graceful handwriting that was timeless while being a cultured and maverick man himself.  John Hancock, the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence in 1776, wrote flamboyantly and makes a good example. Legend has it that he signed it so large “so King George III could read it without his spectacles.”, corresponding to his persona as a wealthy and stylish figure. Through one’s penmanship, you can really glimpse who the person is behind plain text. The variation of force applied, grip, and preferred tip size offered by a fountain pen is the best option in modern days to manifest the nuances created by the very human writing of words down stroke by stroke.

The reason why brushes, used widely in calligraphy, failed to win the competition over pens as the mainstream writing tool was likely the need to condense a considerable amount of information in limited space. The pen’s compact script makes it more favorable. Now, in the era defined by immense information explosion, the fountain pen itself is being superseded by digital typing, which wins on both the speed of production and the storage size. Moving our attention from our analog tools to ourselves, humans are losing to machines in the same aspects – speed and spatial efficiency.

In response to the new societal standards, we cut the uneven parts away to reduce our size and try to speed up with our flesh and blood. We compress our personal aspirations – from careers to beliefs – under the immense pressure of the social steam engine. We speed up by adopting pre-packaged options for identity. One often internalizes those overshadowed by consumerism, like fashion of choice and brands of products used, as a substitute for displays of an authentic self. Meanwhile, the internet may feel like a haven for genuine voice, but handwriting to words is like voiceprint to speech, which grants uniqueness to expression. We can’t see the faces of the humans behind, but identical typefaces like Aptos, or Times New Roman, the same facades as AI-generated texts. When I was young, my dad used to leave me handwritten notes when he had to leave me alone at home to meet with clients. The message be as simple as “Breakfast is on the kitchen table. -Dad”. Though he didn’t write well, I knew it was Dad through his illegible handwriting, as if he was speaking to me face to face and holding the bowl of delicious pilav. I’ve never felt the same warmth after he became obsessed with AI assistants. He thinks they produce better texts than what he’s capable of, but all I can distinguish behind the well-crafted language is how he pressed the button and spoke the prompts before I see his note on the phone. Generative AI together with digital media plundered his penmanship and ultimately, part of his original will to convey. Imagine if aliens are to do some archeology on earth after humans, for some reason, have died out. With everything literal conserved in hard disks instead of handwritten, they would have to find the ruins of GPTZero’s headquarters before they make any progress on how it feels like interacting with another human.

That’s why we can’t just sit and watch fountain pens phase out. It brings back the irreplaceable value of any individual, emphasizes the importance of personal expression and choices, and makes us think twice about our digital dependence in a world where we’re all steadfastly driving toward faster development. The phenomenon puts on an alarm fortimes we’re throwing our bread and butter down the hot-air balloon for elevation as humans. Grasp firmly a fountain pen in your hand and pierce it into the balloon. When it descends and drifts for a bit may you listen to people down in the streets, diverse voices of our civilization.