Chapter 6. E-mail and Newsgroups


All over the world, there are collections of brilliant letters. Letters serve as small time capsules to historians. The paper, the envelope, the stamps, the style of the handwriting, the language used, the spelling, any decorative doodles, the type of pen used, and the manner in which the letter was saved all give a picture of the letter writer, receiver, and time. Our letters are now usually short notes sent by e-mail. Even if someone takes the time to write a long, thoughtful missive, the words and thoughts are in a constant danger of becoming lost or deleted data.

I received two actual items in the mail last week that were not bills or junk mail. I haven't received real mail in ages. The whole thing baffled me. I held the envelopes in my hand and wondered if these were very important messages because the senders had gone to the trouble of using a pen and some paper products. I imagined all sorts of things. Both were stiff envelopes that contained more than just sheets of paper. Why would someone need to send a card of some sort? It wasn't anyone's birthday. Do they still make birthday cards? I shook my head. Of course they still make birthday cards. That's what that big section in the store is for, that section that I always go past without looking in. Both envelopes turned out to be innocuous. One was a change of address from a friend, and the other was full of pictures.

I put the opened envelopes on a table carelessly. Later I could feel them staring at me with a real-world pressure that my inbox full of e-mail never does to me. I put them on a shelf in the cupboard with the paper phone books that also go unused, thinking that I would figure out what to do with them some other time.

Later in the week, I received an important letter that talked of serious subjects. I received that letter as an e-mail. I thought about the irony that the two innocent and casual messages had come through the more permanent and solid channel of snail mail, while the important and serious message had come through e-mail.

Historians in future years will probably not have the treasure of letters from our time. They might find old files saved in mysterious and deprecated formats that no one knows how to open anymore. They might find impersonal-looking printouts of e-mails all typed up and indistinguishable from a business memo except for their content. They will find the odd letter or card here and there that someone like me shoved onto a shelf because they didn't know what else to do with it. They will document the range of years when letters disappeared.

Although I love to look at old letters and appreciate them, I am one of the killers of the letter. I am one of those people who stick to electronic words. I have a great sense of history, but I don't think that it is stronger than my great sense of convenience. I love being able to get rid of little pieces of paper and have everything stored in neat little files. I am a product of my time. Maybe we can find a way to preserve our new electronic history and still infuse it with a sense of our time and of our selves.



Linux Desktop(c) Garage
Linux(R) Desktop Garage
ISBN: 0131494198
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 141

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