MODERN COMMUNICATION, THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY!
While I was growing up I was aware that my mother was a prolific letter writer. She had friends and relatives from one end of the country to the other, and she wrote most of them regularly. And her letters were long, informative, steeped in humor and pathos, and often creative. And she would await the replies with baited breath. And, invariably, she was disappointed. To a news filled six page letter she would most often get a response of no more than a few lines. Sometimes, she got no reply at all. But the point, I suppose, was that she enjoyed writing. So, even with minimal responses she would perservere. Time, she thought, was limitless when it came to the joy of writing her annals of day to day living, and she could not imagine that her correspondents were anything less than thrilled to hear from her. After all, she was not saying, "Hi, how are you, I'm fine". She was expanding, at length, on the vicissitudes of all things important. That anyone could be blase about such matters was unthinkable. And when someone to whom she had penned an epistle would reply, a month or so later, that they had "read your interesting letter; sorry I have no time to answer with anthing more than greetings", she would excuse their behavior by noting (more or less accurately) that their busy lives did not permit them the luxury of anthing more than the most cursory communication.
And so it is with email. The pen, even the typewriter, have given way to the clackety-clack of the on-line instant memo; and the notion of long, newsy, letters is an art form relegated to the mists of memory. People no longer rush, daily, to the mail box to get that long awaited letter from Aunt Sue, Uncle Bob, or even their sons in Iraq. They need only to check their email; and their among the volumes of spam and other unwanted piffle they might find a line or two from a friend or relative. But virtually no one expects to find carefully composed prose. Indeed, given a paragraph, maybe two, we have come to expect spelling errors, grammatic assaults, and prose often so abbreviated as to be indecipherable. Ironically, as we improve the technology of communication we simultaneously degradate its quality.
I recall thinking (wistfully I now realize) that email would help us reinvent communication; that somehow it would encourage us to more carefully compose and edit our thoughts and ideas. But now that the jury is in no such developments have occured. And just as email has supplanted paper, the cell phone is now eradicating personal email. The endless ads--most of them shabby and dashed together with the internet equivalent of baling wire--continue to proliferate, but sitting down at the keyboard and writing the contemporary equivalent of a letter is fast giving way to endless chatter on wireless cell phones.
The good news is that we now have the ability, world-wide, to instantly communicate with almost anyone. Be it email or cell phone we can connect in nano seconds. The bad news is that we do it poorly. We murder the King's english, we abbreviate to the point of distraction, and we have damn little of substance to say. And what is ugly is that this obnoxious process is the by-product of our insistence on shortening every moment in a peculiarly twisted attempt to somehow lengthen them.
My mother went to her grave without ever getting that long letter she so generously sent to others. And were she alive today she would have found no one to write those letters to. And if she had written long emails the disappointment at the replies would have been even more palpable. As for the cell phone, she probably could not have gotten a word in edge wise.
Incidentally, does anyone know where I can find a simple old fashioned phone; the kind you dial easily and just answer when it rings? I hate to admit to ineptitude, but these phones which signal a call with a playing of the Battle Hymn Of The Republic, which allow you to watch TV, which take pictures, (and transmit them), and which have buttons too tiny for all but the smallest hands, are far too complicated for me. Hell, I would even listen to a telemarketer if I could figure out how to answer him.
Is it just me, or is our technology beginning to outstrip our ability to use it?
And so it is with email. The pen, even the typewriter, have given way to the clackety-clack of the on-line instant memo; and the notion of long, newsy, letters is an art form relegated to the mists of memory. People no longer rush, daily, to the mail box to get that long awaited letter from Aunt Sue, Uncle Bob, or even their sons in Iraq. They need only to check their email; and their among the volumes of spam and other unwanted piffle they might find a line or two from a friend or relative. But virtually no one expects to find carefully composed prose. Indeed, given a paragraph, maybe two, we have come to expect spelling errors, grammatic assaults, and prose often so abbreviated as to be indecipherable. Ironically, as we improve the technology of communication we simultaneously degradate its quality.
I recall thinking (wistfully I now realize) that email would help us reinvent communication; that somehow it would encourage us to more carefully compose and edit our thoughts and ideas. But now that the jury is in no such developments have occured. And just as email has supplanted paper, the cell phone is now eradicating personal email. The endless ads--most of them shabby and dashed together with the internet equivalent of baling wire--continue to proliferate, but sitting down at the keyboard and writing the contemporary equivalent of a letter is fast giving way to endless chatter on wireless cell phones.
The good news is that we now have the ability, world-wide, to instantly communicate with almost anyone. Be it email or cell phone we can connect in nano seconds. The bad news is that we do it poorly. We murder the King's english, we abbreviate to the point of distraction, and we have damn little of substance to say. And what is ugly is that this obnoxious process is the by-product of our insistence on shortening every moment in a peculiarly twisted attempt to somehow lengthen them.
My mother went to her grave without ever getting that long letter she so generously sent to others. And were she alive today she would have found no one to write those letters to. And if she had written long emails the disappointment at the replies would have been even more palpable. As for the cell phone, she probably could not have gotten a word in edge wise.
Incidentally, does anyone know where I can find a simple old fashioned phone; the kind you dial easily and just answer when it rings? I hate to admit to ineptitude, but these phones which signal a call with a playing of the Battle Hymn Of The Republic, which allow you to watch TV, which take pictures, (and transmit them), and which have buttons too tiny for all but the smallest hands, are far too complicated for me. Hell, I would even listen to a telemarketer if I could figure out how to answer him.
Is it just me, or is our technology beginning to outstrip our ability to use it?
posted by Garrett W at 10:24 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home