Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat. This version is published with the author’s consent.

Recently, I posed a simple challenge to the smart graduate students in a packed college classroom: “Raise your hand if you have written an actual letter, in your own hand, to someone close to you in the past year.” Not surprisingly, only a few hands were raised in response – and some of them were only referring to greeting cards.

The death of the real written and spoken word has not yet occurred – but we are close to laying them both to rest.The answer is largely the same among other adults – and pre-college-age youth. We don’t really ‘write’ in our own hand anymore. We type it, text it, speak it through a portable device. Satellite, Skype and techno-hype have become today’s “communications.”

Even worse, as the real written word is an endangered species of communications, so, too, is the one-on-one conversation that is the other main anchor of human connection. My own daughters, and their peers,  would often prefer a quick cell phone chat to an actual face-to-face meeting – and they’re indicative of a growing trend.

The translation to all of this is a modern reality that should shake the foundations of our civilization: we’re in the beginning of the end of real communications that actually convey warmth, personal involvement and concern.  But, there is no rebel force fighting to retain the last vestiges of human contact that could prevent us all from being voluntarily locked in our own narrow stalls of technology.

Sure, incredible advances in technology have ‘shrunk’ the planet. Today, the mere push of a button or keyboard transports us to other people in other places. Clearly, the benefits are bountiful and have led to giant leaps of advancement in many fields. I get it.

We are the ‘best’ communicators of modern time because of the speed with which we can do it: from remote locations, having an inane cell phone chat with anyone – just because we can; effortlessly texting a message when we’ve largely forgotten what our own handwriting looks like. We are getting too snug in our modern communications cocoons – and opting for exchanges that provide empty and soulless solitude rather than enriching human interaction.

At a Thanksgiving dinner two years ago, I watched a friend’s teen text her way through dinner, rarely looking up to relate to the people gathered in her home. The scene is repeated every day – at home, work, school, on the street. The disconnection made possible by our tech connections makes all of us producers and publishers -- but the quality of our communications is at an all time low.

I have largely banned hand-held communications devices from any meetings in our business conference room. It seems just plain rude for people to isolate their attention to a tool -- and to ignore the other people in the room.

We are seduced by the addictive allure of devices that we don’t fully understand but still are determined to use -- from our first waking moments to our last conscious acts. The human race is in a frantic daily sprint to constantly stay in touch. In the process, we have lost real touch with the most important principles of human connectedness.

Dennis Kneale, the former managing editor of Forbes magazine, experimented with giving up his communications devices for a week. He broke down in tears during a “Today Show” interview in recalling the difficulty of this new ‘separation anxiety.’

Multi-function technology has devolved us into multi-tasking fanatics who willingly choose to isolate in the process of ‘communicating.’ The result of all of this connectivity: we may be witnessing and hastening the end of real human communication.

[T]he quality of our communications is at an all time low.The death of the real written and spoken word has not yet occurred – but we are close to laying them both to rest. Ironically, we believe we are communicating at the highest level when, in fact, we have reduced the art to a cold, technical exercise devoid of deeper thought, feeling and warmth.

Former NBC news anchorman Tom Brokaw warned in a recent speech that the generation emerging from college is in danger of living a ‘virtual life’ instead of an actual life. But the tech virus has spread to all of us.

The answer to this threat is for each of us to examine how we communicate with the world – and what we should do differently to become the masters of our technology rather than its willing slaves.

It all could begin with a simple letter, in your own hand, to your mother.