Struggling some with the myriad communication tools currently available? Despite the busy buzz of the Twitterati and the Skypers and the Bloggers (though at least the number of people with the Bluetooth cellphone attachments glued into their ears seems to have waned), all of this chatter conveniently brought to you by 21st-century technology has left more than a few people feeling paradoxically isolated. We can say a lot, but what are we really saying?
This letter to the NYTimes provided a pretty powerful view of how the bits and bytes of new apps don’t fill certain voids and can actually unintentionally cover them over with a shiny coat of Let’s Pretend. An important reality check as we mosey down the yellow brick road, it seems.
Wow! What a powerful letter. I actually thought at first it was going to be a letter praising some kind of iPhone app.
I just mailed my Grandmother a photograph this morning. Gee, no – she doesn’t have email! I had to buy a stamp! OMG!!!
Do you have letters saved from back in the day? I have a ton from friends and relatives…they’re really precious. And I’m a fan of published letters and correspondence…although a collection of published emails wouldn’t do much for me…
And isn’t there a whole genre of literature where a story is told via “letters” by the characters? Stoker’s Dracula is composed this way. I’m sure there are other examples…
Molly adds: And in contrast, I have a broken hard drive in my desk wrapped in protective silvery foil. One day when I have $1K, I can try and get all my 2003-2006 correspondence back off it. I do stumble on printouts I made of long letter-style emails from time to time, and those do hold up in the same sense, I find.
I have some printouts of emails – some of that stuff is hilarious (well, to me anyway…) for the back and forth and reactive quality to the correspondence.
But I think taking a piece of paper, folding it to fit into a stamped envelope, and then mailing it across the ocean is just a whole other kind of alchemy though…that’s what I get from this woman’s letter to the Times…you get this object, a somewhat fragile object, to hold, open, read and put somewhere safe.