Kaplan's concern is not without merit but how hard is it to rig the local subnet's TIA-box, I mean Cisco, to filter all the email packets and then pipe the output to the printer down the hall?Twenty years from now, if someone went looking for similar memos by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, and Elliott Abrams on, say, the Bush administration's Middle East policies, not many memos would be found because they don't exist. Officials today e-mail their thoughts and proposals. Perhaps some individuals have been fastidious about printing and saving their e-mails, but there is no system in place for automatically doing so.
Rather, I have in mind the brief notation of the day's highlight, the amusing encounter or useful insight that will someday evoke a memory of yourself when young. Such a journal entry perhaps an e-mail to your encoded personal file can now be supplemented by scanned-in articles, poems or pictures to create a "commonplace book." You will then have a private memory-jogger and resource for reminiscence at family gatherings.