IT’S a strange thing that, as methods of communication grow more sophisticated and advanced, the uses to which they are put seem to get more infantile and base.

Almost daily, we are bombarded with new ways in which to keep in touch with our fellow men.

Mobile phones, Blackberries, text messages, blogs, emails and Skype, whatever that may be: they all make the humble pager seem like a carrier pigeon, or a parchment scroll tied around an arrow.

Once upon a time, the pager was used to keep Westminster’s village idiots “on message”.

I bet quite a few people, not least Gordon Brown, are feeling nostalgic this week for a bit of reliable old technology, in the wake of an email smear scandal that is as childish as it is nasty.

It’s interesting not only that the Prime Minister has taken it upon himself to write to the campaign’s victims personally, but also that he has chosen to do so with hand-written letters.

Of course, this gives a much-needed personal touch to an “expression of regret”, sorry being, as usual, the hardest word.

But more importantly, putting an actual pen to actual paper places Brown as far from all the virtual carnage as it is possible to be without taking a chisel to a tablet of stone.

All of which is handy when those responsible for the technological thuggery are among your close advisers, and what they have done is the electronic equivalent of the playground whispering campaign.

I wonder how Gordon got on with his fountain pen. Maybe he’s a devotee, in which case, more power to him. I am ashamed to admit it, but I no longer possess pen and ink, and the last time I hand-wrote anything longer than a shopping-list on the back of an envelope was during last year’s summer holiday, when I sent some postcards home.

It’s a shame. I can hear my mother’s voice as I say this, but in my day, penmanship was important at school. I could actually write with an italic nib, and I wasn’t alone. Teachers insisted on neat, legible homework, and blotting your copybook was a literal thing. At my first newspaper office, reporters still hand-wrote their articles, and woe betide the journalist not capable of sending clean copy (legible, without errors and crossings-out) through to the sub-editors.

What all this meant was that you had to put a bit of thought into what you were going to write, so that you didn’t muck things up and have to start all over again, wasting both time and paper.

The miracle of technology has wiped away much of this need for care. It’s great for speeding things up, and the spell-check can eliminate most – but not all – howlers.

However, a spell-check is not a conscience. It can’t stop people who, thanks to technological advances, can in an instant aim the most wounding of insults at other human beings: people to whom they would probably be perfectly pleasant if they ever met face-to-face.

Developments have made it easier than ever for humans to stay closer to one another; yet they often divorce people so much from the effects of their actions that they do not give a second thought to the cruelty they inflict.