Technology’s Crutch – The Decent of Man – Part One

OK! Time for a trip in the way back machine. Don’t roll your eyes it’ll just be a short trip because I know for most of you under 30 your attention spans are about as long as a YouTube video. So here goes. So, just how did we survive for the last 50 years without electronic gizmos and gadgets telling us what to do and how to do it? For those of you who have less than 20 years under your belts, it must seem impossible.
Lets start with the basics – writing. Using a pen or pencil held in their hand people put their thoughts on paper in a structured fashion according to a set of rules. These rules are called grammar. The sheet was then placed in an envelope, addressed it to whomever you’re writing to, stamped and mailed. Your mail didn’t arrive at its destination with the speed of the light – it took a few days to get there. Because of this time lag the writer took great care in getting as much information and emotion as possible into each letter. So you could write clearly, I mean how the words were formed on the paper, there were classes in elementary school called ‘Penmanship’ – and why not? If the reader couldn’t understand what you had written of what use was the letter in the first place? Compared to the cold nature of a printed bill you might receive in an email, or snail mail, a hand written letter in much warmer and personal.
Your style, choice of words and their structure convey a message of feelings and care. It isn’t difficult to press the delete key on an email but it’s harder to throw away a handwritten letter. Electronic technology puts people at an emotional distance from what they are doing or communicating. In the social media realm it’s easy to ‘troll’ someone opinion or photos without consequences. Where as, if you did this face to face or in written form there could be multiple different results.

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