Letter writing is not like riding a bike

When I sat down to write my letter of appreciation (to my aunt) I thought to myself, “when was the last time I wrote a letter? When was the last time I received one?” Cards don’t count. Cards are not the same as letters. Cards say – I remembered it was your birthday, and you are close enough to me that I wanted and/or felt obliged to do something so that you knew that I knew that it was your birthday. Therefore, I went out, bought this card, signed it, maybe wrote a little something, and sent it off. As you can see, the $2.49 spent plus postage equates to something less tangible but more genuine. Letters, on the other hand, say infinitely more. Letters are used nowadays to convey love, friendship, hatred, sympathy or tell of something horrible which has happened. Except for the most obvious blatant exception: Christmas letters, which are used in a sing-song sort of way to tell all receivers my family is insurmountably better than yours.

The letter to my aunt was quite difficult and took much more time than I expected. I encountered numerous problems. Let’s list them.

1. My pen did not have a back space key.

2. My paper did not have red squiggly lines to indicate misspelled words.

3. Ditto green squiggly lines to indicate poor grammar.

4. My penmanship was certainly not as clear as times new roman’s is.

5. Nowhere on my paper could I find a way to highlight a word and have numerous synonyms pop up to immediately raise my IQ.

6. When I sat for more than 3 minutes without writing, my paper did not turn into a scene from outer space to make me feel like I was flying.

Despite these set backs, I felt a wondrous sense of accomplishment once the letter was sent. A feeling I did not get sending my sister a similarly appreciative email. I rarely use emails to send serious messages and I found the task difficult. I had to struggle not to include that I was only writing her because of an assignment I had to do. It seemed incredibly inappropriate to be sending off such a serious heartfelt email. My feelings of inappropriateness were, in this case at least, correct. The day after sending my sister this email I got a text message on my phone asking “What was that all about?”

The more I thought about this experience, the more philosophical I became. If I never write letters it can logically be deduced that my letter writing (which did occur in the past) has been replaced with emailing. I never send serious emails I feel it’s inappropriate. Therefore, it can be concluded that I never have anything serious to say. Is that true? Do I not have anything serious to say? I tried to console myself with the idea that I have serious phone conversations, but it only worked a little.

Is emailing destroying the age old art of letter writing? For me it is. I don’t write emails in the same manner I write letters. Emailing is quicker and lighter than letter writing. Like I feel sending serious emails is inappropriate, I would feel similarly strange sending off a letter full of silly fluff. Is this, I wonder, what Postman meant by a Technopoly? He writes, “Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself.” And how does this affect my ability to relate with those around me?

Before this assignment, I would have argued that computers and the internet may impact my abilities to communicate in minor ways, for the most part, I communicate in the same way I always have…but using different means. This however is not the case. In Online Communication Wood and Smith use the example of emails exchanged within a company to show that communicators through emails were “more likely to exhibit self-absorbed behavior, to display little differentiation among people of different status and, and to act more uninhibited.” This, they argue, is largely due to lack of social context clues that dominate face to face interactions. But if these emails were so similar in this respect, and I had a hard time writing a serious email to my sister, then where is the social clue that tells us emails are to be used for silly play and not serious means. And if emailing is not used for serious purposes and letter writing isn’t as popular, then do we ever communicate seriously through written words?

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