@smokey I'm really interested in this myself, as a life long letter writer and diarist. Remember those days of confiding in a diary, or in a letter to a friend? Of course you could be found out, or a letter read aloud, but there certainly is a difference when your audience is one person, or all of them....

I like your comments too about what happens to our data. It reminded me of an interesting book I'm part-way through, called "When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future". It's fascinating stuff. I've also been reading a bit lately about what has been lost when things are digitized - such as card catalogs in libraries. But I'm hijacking the conversation, sorry!