We live in a world full of technology. There's email, blogging, Facebook, Twitter (among many more I'm sure), which are not only available now from your computer or laptop but (for most people) your phone as well. It seems that quickly we are becoming a society who relies almost entirely on forms of communication in which you don't actually have to "communicate". Sounds a bit contradictory to say as I'm typing this on a blog and not actually writing it in a journal or notebook. But it's gotten me thinking. Does anybody actually write anymore? You know, with paper and pen the way we used to do?
Growing up I used to write a lot. Ironically, most of the stories I've written have been on the computer. Thanks to my mom's job in the IT world, we've had a computer at our house since there was such a thing. Our first one was the big beige box with a black screen and green typing. When you booted up, you saw C:// (and you had to know what to do with it or you weren't getting anywhere). Back then you actually had to know something about computers to navigate them. You still had to be smarter than the computer in order to use it. Looking back, I think the only reason I wrote most of my stories on the computer was because I've always typed faster than I can write. The pen has never been very good at keeping up with the thoughts that go zooming through my head, but my fingers proved to be much more successful. Still...I wrote a lot too!
I had pen pals. Actual pen pals. Several of them. It was always so exciting to be to pull out my pretty stationary and a neat looking pen, maybe a sticker or two, and write a letter to someone. Sometimes it was a friend. Other times it was a family member. Either way, I loved writing down the accounts of my life to share with someone who I knew gave a crap. More exciting though was going to the mailbox every day in anticipation of a return letter. Then the day that a letter for me arrived! WOW! Getting mail used to feel closer to Christmas. Now with the only mail I get coming in the forms of junk or bills...that little flutter of excitement I used to get running to the mailbox has long since disappeared. So much so that checking the mail is one of my least favorite things to do...and a task I try to pawn off on my husband as often as possible.
It saddens me a bit that this is the way the world is turning. Don't get me wrong...I'm ALL about the everyday tasks in which technology makes ten times easier. I love being able to shop in my PJs or watch a movie in my underwear by the glow of my computer screen. But it's also becoming very harmful in a way. It's causing people to become more and more disconnected from others. Used to be if you had a fight or a problem with someone, the only way you could tell them how you felt was to call them or see them in person. Then, of course, you had to work up the nerve to tell them whatever you had to say "directly" to them. Usually during the course of getting up your nerve, you would calm down and either get over it or have a much more civil conversation in the long run. Now, thanks to technology, you can write whatever you want whenever you want and put it out for whoever you want to see it. In fact, I know several people who only confront people they have issues with over email. EMAIL? Of course, when they see them in person they act as if all is well as good. I've even had it happen to me. Angry parents emailing me, my principal, my superintendent over their outrage that I gave little Johnny that particular grade. How I'm not fit to teach...barely fit to be in the same room as a child. Then they wake up the next morning all calm and realize they just over-reacted. Now they expect to go on as if nothing had ever happened. But something did. Those words hurt, and true or not, now I'm under the microscope because you decided to act like a little brat. And unlike a letter that you could rip up, throw away, burn, and never see again...some things on your computer are there forever, whether you like it or not.
Then there's the power technology has given to bullying. When I was growing up, the worst bullying could be was the snotty cheerleaders or football players spreading rumors about you through the hallway. And it hurt too. But you and your friends would just spend your weekends making fun of them behind their backs, trying to ignore it at school, and move on. Now there's hate sites and pages and mass emails where people you don't even know can jump on the "you suck" band wagon. As if high school isn't challenging enough for some kids, let's add all that fuel to an already huge fire. I would not want to be a teenager today. I worry how things like this will be for my daughter when she gets there. Hopefully not like they are now...
So where did that personal connection with people go? What happened to writing? For so many years that was people's main form of communicating...and now...it seems to have vanished. What would the world be like if we went back to that? What would your life be like if you had to shut off the comuter, power down the Blackberry, turn off the IPhone and actually write? Could you even remember how?
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