One reaction to the growing presence of cyberspace is to see it as a threat to the traditional human value of social, face to face exchange. Yet, this is... nothing to be alarmed about, for it is the eagerness to communicate and the desire to be heard by another that activate those fingers. The fact is that when we use computers we are having an exchange with other humans, through the machine, not 'with the machine'.
Sometimes I think that the telephone call is as earthbound as daily dialogue, while a letter is an exchange of gifts. On the telephone, you talk; in a letter you tell. There is a pace to letter writing and reading that doesn't come from the telephone company but from your own rhythm.
We live mostly in a hi-tech, reach-out-and-touch-someone modern world. Communication is an industry. It makes demands of us. We are expected to respond as quickly as computers. A voice asks a question across the ocean and we are supposed to formulate an answer to this high-speed rate of exchange.
But we can not, blessedly, 'interface' by mail. There is a leasure and emotional luxury in letter writing. There are no obvious silences to anxiously fill. There are no interruptions to brook. There are no nuances and tones of voice to distract.
Today, we are supposed to travel light, to live in the moment. The past is, we are told, excess baggage. There is no question that the phone is the tool of these times. As fine and as epheremal as a good meal.
But you cannot hold a call in your hands. You cannot put it in a bundle. You cannot show it to your family. Indeed, there is nothing to show for it. It doesn't leave a trace. Tell me how you can wrap a lifetime of phone calls in a rubber band for a summer's night when you want to remember?
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