Is proper penmanship dead in the Digital Age?

Lousy penmanship isn't just for doctors anymore. Due to increased computer use and the near extinction of old-fashioned letter writing, hardly any of us can read our own scrawls anymore. Is this a bad thing? Should we fight to save good penmanship or treat it as another passing memory of the Analog Age? Watch the discussion on Thursday's show and vote in our online poll below.
Here's the story
Interest in proper penmanship has dropped so severely, the annual National Cursive Handwriting Contest has been canceled for the first time in its 100-year history, the The New York Times reports.
How strange, then, says the Times, that hardware and software makers are pushing so hard to develop tablet PCs that are designed to read and interpret natural handwriting. Microsoft, with its Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, is banking on businessmen and home users jotting handwritten notes directly onto their computers, or even sending email in hand-scribbled script.
But if our collective handwriting has become so illegible, how is this artificially (un)intelligent software going to decipher our "gigabytes" from our "trilobites"?
"If someone takes a handwritten note and the next day they come back and can't read it, our handwriting-recognition engine is not going to do so well on it either," a Microsoft representative told the Times. "The general rule of thumb is that you get better results with neater handwriting."
Our questions
Is it time to abandon good penmanship or will legible handwriting always be important? Can you read your own handwriting? Can others? Can you remember the last time you hand wrote anything beyond a thank you note? Has your PC killed your penmanship?
Sound off
Save your writing wrists and type your opinions in the Talkback section below the poll or join the discussion on the message boards.