A rchive Date
[ 16-06-2003 ]
Category
[ Science ]
sub-Categoy
[ Science & Technology ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/goodden.html
Pining for simplicity of days gone by
Herman Goodden, London Free Press
2003-06-16
I'm busy tonight, so I'm passing along this invitation I just received to anyone else who might want to give it a whirl.
"MODEL CHER RAINES SYDNEY MODEL. YES YOU HAVE GOT THE RIGHT NUMBER I WILL GO OUT WITH YOU FOR DINNER CALL ME AFTER 9 P.M. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA 0500 553 003"
I wanted to write about technology's undertow; those unforeseen side-effects that accompany the development of any new communications tool. So when I fired up the old Toshiba and Cher's bemusing little missive popped up (I mean, 9 p.m., whose time? Do those digits constitute an actual phone number with area code? Should I make reservations in London or Sydney?), I thought, right - spam - that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
I'm not decrying the development of personal computers and e-mail. If you told me 20 years ago that the day would come when I wouldn't have to blacken 10 to 20 sheets of paper before achieving a legible final draft of a column . . . that I would be able to work at home with vintage Kinks blaring on the stereo until the very last minute of my deadline and then effortlessly deliver my scintillating copy with the push of a button (no more cycling to the Free Press through rainstorms with two sodden pages in my clammy mitt) . . . I would have said you were reading too much Buck Rogers.
Having to regularly delete pesky come-ons from Australian models or dubious pharmaceutical companies offering anatomy enhancements, is a small enough price to pay for enjoying such technological advances. But I do occasionally pine for what now appears to be the simplicity and unassailable privacy of earlier days.
What got me thinking along this line was a character in a Don DeLillo novel who goes off on this thoughtful little rant when he tries to make an important phone call and gets stuck with his friend's answering machine.
"The machine makes everything a message, which destroys the poetry of nobody home. Home is a failed idea. People are no longer home or not home. They're either picking up or not picking up."
He's quite right. Before the advent of the machine, no one ever stared at a ringing phone in indifference or fatigue, thinking, "Oh, I can't be bothered."
People always tried to answer incoming calls and would interrupt virtually any activity to do so. It didn't matter if you were out digging in the back of the garden, or down in the basement hauling wet laundry out of the washing machine. At the sound of that first ring - like some immaculately trained Pavlovian dog - you immediately commenced sprinting toward the sound of that bell.
That was the universal protocol. Because it was so completely obeyed, there was something irrefutable about an unanswered call. In the modern parlance, there was, temporarily at least, a kind of "closure."
Now that we always get to say our piece in these isolated one-way instalments, no dialogue ever has to be dropped or set aside for a spell. But on each side of these unsatisfying exchanges we are simultaneously plagued by suspicions of bad faith. "Why don't they get back to me?" "Why don't they pick up?" or, "Why do they bug me with these petty questions?"
As one who keeps every personal letter I've ever received on file, I'm amused to pick up some old ones hammered out on manual typewriters and read that correspondent's apology for resorting to so "impersonal" a medium.
Set beside a modern e-mail or perfectly printed pages that have been processed by computer and sent through the mail, those old typewritten pages - with Xed-out mistakes or globs of typed-over whiteout - exude as much personality as a candid snapshot.
We couldn't see it then, but we sure do now.
Herman Goodden is a London freelance writer. His column appears in Monday's and Thursday's Opinion pages. It no longer appears in Sunday's A&E section. He can be e-mailed at herman.goodden@sympatico.ca.
Copyright © The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003]
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