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Sunday, August 23, 2015

REFLECTIONS


DOES TECHNOLOGY TAKE MORE THAN IT GIVES?


Take letter writing:

The art of the handwritten letter has largely fallen victim to the evolution of technology. 

Communications today have become more immediate and almost entirely digital. 

When I went off to college, I would communicate with friends at far-flung locations 

by writing and mailing letters updating them on developments and responding to their own letters. 

When college classmates would spend a semester abroad, 

we would exchange letters on special airmail paper that was lighter weight and thus cost less to mail.

 Phone calls were few and far between — even domestically — because long distance rates were so high.

 Today, Skype can be used at low-cost to talk to friends overseas. 

Email lets you stay in touch with friends in every corner of the country and the globe 

virtually instantly at no significant cost. 


WHAT HAVE WE LOST WITH THE DECLINE OF LETTER WRITING?


1.) SOLID WRITING SKILLS

Term papers are cold, impersonal.  Short emails and texts are chaotic without form or structure or reasoned thinking.


2.) SPELLING

Text messaging discourages correct spelling.  There is no safety net of spell check with letters.  You are forced to do it right the first time.


3.) THE VALUE OF WORDS

Words matter. 

When writing a letter, it is important to consider how the words will be interpreted on the other end by the recipient.

The lag-time between writing and receiving a letter meant we'd best be careful we would not be misunderstood. 


4.) OUR CONNECTION TO THE PAST

Emails are fleeting, highly perishable.  

How many emails do you save for years?

All letters, old and new, are still-existing parts of a life.

To read them now is to be present in the past 

with some discovery of truth or revelation of the soul that for the writer is just now occurring for them.

To come upon a personal truth of a human being, now gone forever, is to admit them in a way to our friendship.

It is much like receiving a winking glance from some very bright eye, 

still mischievous and mischief-making, arriving from 50 or 100 years ago.

The letters of Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Raymond Chandler are good at that last.



BUT IN THE AGE OF THE SELFIE, DO WE CARE ABOUT THE OTHER PERSON ANYMORE?



Except as audience, of course.

I am ancient enough to remember photographs.  

The treasured book of them contained more pictures of our loved ones and friends than of ourselves.


BUT TODAY 
DO WE ONLY TREASURE OURSELVES?

8 comments:

  1. The more things change, the more they stay the same is a Jewish proverb. I think it holds true about human nature but culture is most definitely fluid.

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    1. I still old letters sent to me. And volumes of collected letters from C S Lewis, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, John Steinbeck are better than an autobiography by them.

      Mark Twain wrote: history does not repeat itself -- but it does rhyme!

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  2. Yes.
    There are some very real pluses to technology. And some little acknowledged minuses too.

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    1. I wouldn't take away the advance in medical science by any means! But digital tech seems to more and more isolate humans one from the other. :-(

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  3. MY girlfriend gave me a letter from 1876, written by a mother in Sweden to her son in America. I'm supposed to translate it. This will not be difficult as the handwriting is incredibly beautiful and clear. Letter writing was indeed an art back in the day. And you know how I feel about our culture today......

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    1. Yes, some older letters were literal works of art, weren't they?

      Our culture sings the praises of the self as it grows colder to the needs of those with little power to applaud. :-(

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  4. I have young relatives who rave about the letters my mother and other "old folks" write. It really is becoming a lost art. But any of us who know history or literature realize how essential they are to our human record.

    And selfies are.... well, sometimes just selfish.

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    1. Emails will not last years much less decades -- nor are most worthy of being kept. Reading a letter from Mark Twain is like listening to him speak across the years to you, making you smile.

      Selfies, as you say, are just selfish. I tire of the Kardashians pimping their bodies daily. Sigh.

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