SNAIL MAIL CURSIVE
Tuesday, June 8, 2021
Things I see or read are rarely new.
They sometimes elicit a “who knew?” reaction – not because they are of earth rattling importance, but because they cause a pause, a wink, or internal smile about how the world works and how we fit, or not, within it …
Case in point, do you remember using these, or worse – remembering when they were new: thermal paper roll fax machine, dial-up, floppy disks, pagers, and beepers.
Also obsoleted are pink-slip phone messages, busy signals, getting film developed, and library cards.
I remember patiently waiting for something in the mail, checking the box every day.
That was called mail. It was the only mail. Now we have voice-mail and email, express mail, priority-mail, marketing mail, parcel-post, courier packs of the physical kind, and packets of bits and bytes in the virtual world compressing our mail and our attachments/enclosures.
But hardly any snail-mail because scarcely anyone writes letters anymore.
And then there was the hand-written cursive reply. Never reply-to-all. We replied to one person, and a series of letters became a conversation – with time to think before we wrote or re-wrote.
Nobody does that anymore. We type quickly, hit send, and then we think.
Or, we pick up the phone – we rarely have to go through a switchboard, receptionist, or assistant. We either get through, or we get voice-jail – at which time we talk before we think.
Today, a text message or email confirmation that isn’t instantaneous or auto-replied is considered slow.
It seems only a short while ago, we all learned everything slowly – bits and pieces, TV news, newspapers and magazines. We counted on good reporting, we wanted facts, and we expected perspective.
Now, the uber-modern version of everything is instantaneous information – perhaps valid, perhaps complete, probably neither – as we all learn the same things in the same time frame wherever on earth or in space they took place.
It’s harder for politicians to play ‘revisionist history’ when there is a photo, a tweet, a video or some ‘on the internet’ published documents. Of course, none of that prevents liars, bullies, Trump or Putin, North Korea or China, or anyone else from polluting the knowledge-sphere with untruths, but it’s not as much fun getting the news anymore.
We get more tech but less truth.
Less anticipation, more skepticism, please.
Give me some mail at the pace of a snail, please – not every day, but now and then, it would be nice.
Lately, I’ve become, as most people have, a Zoom user. I’m experimenting with recording an on-screen message – and then sending the recording. It will take some practice, but I like the idea of leaving a voice and face message for someone. And if I don’t like it, I can re-record before hitting send.
Reader feedback:
Hello Mark .. one of your best columns, containing much wisdom. The poem was a bit of a tear jerker, but spot on. Thank you for reminding us to fix the future, BR, Calgary, AB