I stumbled across an interesting site today to do with letter writing. I wrote not so long ago, in "Letters of Ted Hughes," that I am interested in the letter as an artifact. Rick Schrager has created "The Letter Project." Rick will write a letter to anyone requesting one. Because he does not know most correspondents, of course, the content may well be rather mundane. Stop by to check it out.
Modern methods of communication--from the telegram to the telephone and cellphone, from radio to television and internet-based chat programs and e-mail--are saving us a great deal of time. They connect more people, more quickly, across greater distances than ever before. Drafting our letters, if we may call e-mails that, now takes up most of the time, whereas in times past, in the days of letter writing, it was the long and sometimes risky journey that took the most time.
While we have certainly gained things, most notably time, through the digital world, I cannot help but feel we have also lost something significant. For one thing, because of the ease and speed of digital communications, we often care less about what, and how, we communicate. Letter writing was a craft. Time had to be taken to think things through and to find just the right words to express ourselves. And because feelings are often intensified over both time and distance, and the response to a poorly formulated and thus misunderstood letter took just as long to come back, letters were often both more clearly, and more passionately, expressed. Digital communication may be faster, but it is also, like much of modern life, increasingly evanescent, easily erased, and quickly forgotten.
