If you belong to the pre-Generation Y era, then you can hark back to the days when you lugged around bunches of notebooks to school and made good academic use of them, doodles included.

During that time, no one had any inkling that playthings like BlackBerries, iPhones, Treos and Macs would one day dominate the progressive world and put them literal notebooks almost out of business (well, almost, but not quite). But come, see, and conquer these digital accessories did.

And with humankind aiming to achieve a paperless office (which in actuality means less paper in the office), it seemed that notebooks were going the way of CDs.

However, a certain brand of note pad has apparently altered the course of notebook history. The Moleskine notebook, which happily isn’t fashioned out of the skins of moles, is a modern-day creation based on old-fashioned principles — and with utmost practicality, to boot.

It boasts of a band that keeps the book sealed shut and a binding that keeps the book open (when you want it to and as long as you want it to). Even as some technology enthusiasts rally for the espousal of the no-paper reform and denounce the felling of trees, many of them acknowledge that sometimes old school trumps new technology (try doodling in electronic form). Just go to Flickr! and Moleskinerie for evidence. You won’t be left wanting. Overwhelmed, yes.

The Moleskine is everything that geeks and techies do NOT hanker for — no built in Internet browser, no calendar, no calculator, no nothing. Just pages and pages of cream-hued paper and a back pocket. But despite its old-fashioned stance, this low-tech PDA has a touch of modernism and is classified as hip. Just check out the Moleskine releases.

Folks over at Moleskine never fail to churn out collection after collection of notebooks, including a trendy line for hip cities like Paris and Prague, in addition to the numerous formats, sizes and page layouts to fit the needs of the modern user. They even design custom editions created alongside international cultural organizations, universities, and companies, including business and social projects. And who knows what they’re up to now?

Statistics for Moleskine usage may be hard to come by, but it’s safe to say that the passion and devotion Moleskine users (aka the Moleskiners) have for their notebooks are indications that the notebook era is far from over — and certainly not heading the way of the fossil.