Old Media to New

The future is rarely as those in the past pictured it. We do not fly about in dirigibles or heli-cars; our school-age children don't take field trips to Mars, and those loose-fitting glittery pant-suits that the people of the future wore in old science fiction films never really came into fashion. In fact, one could say that most of us here in the twenty-first century are, in many areas of our lives, still using things invented in the nineteenth century: the internal combustion engines in our cars, the gas furnaces that heat our homes, the machine-woven cotton shirts we wear, the pencils and ball-point-pens we write with, and the fax machines in our offices.

And we still write letters, at least, though not quite the way we used to. Over his lifetime, the novelist Charles Dickens penned 14,252 letters -- probably more, since that's just the number that have survived to this day. Had he not died at the relatively young age of 58, he would have doubtless written thousands more. He was hardly alone; many other nineteenth-century writers were equally active, as were a great many ordinary people in various walks of life. Nowadays, though we may still send a great many brief e-mails, or text- or voice-messages, it's rare for most of us to send a "letter"of any length, let along the enormous missive sent by C. Morton Morse of Portland Oregon in 1911. That letter, claimed at the time to be the longest ever composed, contained more than 32,000 words and was written on a continuous roll of paper 72 feet long.

The telephone, which after the personal letter has a fair claim to be the oldest still commonly-used means of interpersonal communication today, may still be with us, but its usage has changed dramatically. The phone itself has gone from being a household appliance to something carried in one's pocket, and live voice communication may be its least common use. Many people rarely answer theirs, relying on voicemail to retain anything important, or screening their calls with custom ringtones. And, in the business world, it's rare to initiate communication by phone -- in one office, an employee was heard to complain that a coworker should have e-mailed in advance if he planned to call!

The great dream of 1950's and 1960's Sci-Fi -- the video phone -- is now a reality via Skype, although ironically enough, there is no phone, and (unlike the famous scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey) no toll for most of these calls (although $1.70 isn't too bad for a minute-long call from outer space).

So how much do you use these "old" media means of "reaching out to touch someone" (as the Bell System phone advertisement used to put it)? Do you often talk with friends on the phone for more than a minute or two? Do you Skype? And if so, how often? And when was the last time you literally sat down and wrote a letter to a friend or family member on a piece of paper?