I'm an old fart. When I was a kid the standard and pretty much only form of written communication was a hand written letter. Typewriters existed. But most of them were manual (hit a key and a series of levers would cause a letter to thwap into the paper). Electric typewriters existed. Here it was like power brakes on a car. You hit the key and electricity assisted the levers to thwap on the paper so you didn't have to hit the key so hard for the typewriter to work. But typewriters were for the office. Few homes had them. My home didn't have one.
So people like me were expected to occasionally hand write a letter to grandma or whoever. I was really bad at this for two reasons. The first one was practical. My handwriting was and still is horrible. I was taught "Palmer" penmanship in school but it didn't take. At some point I switched to printing rather than writing. But my printing, while better, was also pretty unreadable. The second problem was I was always stumped as to what to write. I now know that banal is just fine. Just natter on and everyone would be happy. But I was not a good natterer and I just never even figured out that that was what you did. So I was a bad boy. I can't remember writing even one letter as a kid. And just to give you an idea of how different that time was, a first class postage stamp was three cents.
In high school my mother insisted that I take typing. This was an improvement in that at least what I wrote would be legible. But I was also a terrible typist. A typical person can learn to type 30 - 80 words per minute. My top speed was about 15. And I was very inaccurate. If I tried to type even 15 words per minute I would make lots of mistakes. I remember that in one speed test lasting 15 seconds I made 12 mistakes. In spite of this my mother sent me off to college with a small typewriter, which was a good idea.
In terms of coming up with what to say, things got a little better. I had to take a series of English classes as a Freshman. After a couple of failed attempts to do something sensible I found that what worked for me was procrastination. If I waited until I barely had time to finish the composition then batted out whatever came to mind, I could complete the assignment. Surprisingly I got fairly good grades for these efforts.
Computers and I first met in college. And I found that I finally was in an environment that worked for me. I found I could quickly compose computer programs. And the "keypunch" machines of the time were like typewriters. Except there were tricks that allowed you to correct mistakes. And 15 words per minute was no impediment. While I was relatively quick, I wasn't quick enough to compose computer programs faster than I could type them in. So I was in hog heaven.
For many years I assumed that my compositional efforts would be restricted to computer software and I was OK with that. But technology marched on. First the CRT came along. CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube. It is actually just the picture tube part of an old fashioned TV. But it came to be the nickname for a device consisting of a keyboard, CRT, and associated electronics. You typed on the keyboard and characters appeared on the screen. But now all you had to do was hit the "backspace" key to go back and correct errors. This was an improvement but initially it was only practical for using with computer software. So it became much easier for me to compose and update computer software but it was still impractical to apply these techniques to regular letters to regular people.
But an interesting thing happened as technology continued marching. I could pretend to write a program but then instead of putting it into the computer I could just print it out. Using this trick I could compose something like a letter. And I did so. I composed and printed a number of letters about some practice or project having to do with work and passed them along to the computer center manager. He told me he liked them and found the information in them useful. He encouraged me to write more of them. This was the first time it occurred to me that I might have something to say.
Technology marched on and E-Mail evolved. This was clearly a potential substitute for the hand written letter. Initially it as only a little better than the "write a computer program that is really a letter and then print it out" system I had been using. And E-Mail systems only allowed you to send a letter to someone who had a CRT that was hooked up to the same computer as your CRT. So it was only good for sending E-Mail to other people who worked in the same building or perhaps the same company. But eventually E-Mail systems started connecting to each other and finally through the Internet to anyone who had a computer. And by this time lots of people had a computer.
I had finally arrived. I could communicate via E-Mail. I could type rather than write. So the result was legible. I had decided by this time that I had something to say. Mostly it was about work or technical stuff but that beat having nothing to say at all. I am still not that good at nattering but I am better than I used to be. And E-Mail systems came with spell check. I have always been a bad speller. Being a bad speller then adding a lot of typing mistakes on top makes for a pretty bad situation. But it was as good as it was going to get for me.
But technology continued to march on. E-Mail is now "so last year" or "last decade" or whatever. (See, there is an entirely legitimate use for the much maligned "whatever"). The currently popular methods of communication are Facebook and Twitter. I have neither a Facebook account nor a Twitter account. To be a proper Facebook user you are supposed to post pictures and do all kinds of other stuff I am bad at. Twitter is all about the famous "140 character limit". A lot of people have found a lot of very good things to say in 140 characters. And Twitter allows you to link to something like a picture, a blog post, or something else that doesn't fit into 140 characters. But I am a long form kind of guy. Most of the time I want to say something that will take a lot more than 140 characters to say. Facebook is a great picture sharing service. And Twitter is a great way to broadcast headlines. But I am not very good at either of those things. So I have been passed by.
But wait, it's worse. Most people still have one or more E-Mail accounts. So I can pretty much communicate to anyone I want by sending an E-Mail. But I have noticed something. A lot of people manage their E-Mail accounts using a smart phone. Smart phones have sucky keyboards. So people keep their responses short. And I find that sometimes they don't scroll down or whatever (because it's hard to do on that small screen) and they miss part of what's in my message. So I find that E-Mail is becoming more and more Twitterized. It is becoming just another home for "headline" messages.
"What a world. What a world."
BTW, that's what The Wicked Witch of the West said while she was melting in the 1939 MGM version of "The Wizard of Oz".
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