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ClippingsFebruary 09, 2011 I grew up toward the end of the Age of Letter Writing. No one knew this age was coming to an end. We didn't call our letters "snail mail" either. Mail involved sheets of paper, a writing instrument, an envelope, and stamps. What other kind of mail was there? I loved writing letters. I loved getting letters. Most of the time I loved opening letters -- unless the letter was from my mother. Letters from my mother looked like the best kind: the envelopes bulged outward the way envelopes do when they contain several pieces of paper. But they rarely lived up to their first impression. Letters from my mother usually contained a short handwritten note (my mother's handwriting was as illegible as mine) and at least half a dozen newspaper and magazine clippings. The clippings might be about national or international events, or about the achievements or death of someone I'd known in grade school. I did like the cartoons and comic strips, but that still didn't make the packet a letter. Other than the handwriting, there was precious little of my mother in those envelopes. Almost two weeks ago I finally got myself on Facebook. I'm liking Facebook, but logging on reminds me of getting letters from my mother. Many, many posts consist of hyperlinks to online sources: news stories, essays, photographs, other visual art, and so on. These have no direct connection to the poster; the poster is just passing them along. The way my mother passed along all those clippings. I've been online since 1994, so this is not new, and it certainly isn't peculiar to Facebook. For years friends and acquaintances have been sending me links to articles and cartoons and petitions; they forward stuff to me that's been forwarded to them by friends of friends of friends (often with the whole long line of transmission intact -- but that's another rant). OK, fine: this stuff is easy to delete if I don't have time or am just not interested. But why doesn't someone who's known me for several years realize that I don't want to read racist jokes or endorse an anti-choice political candidate? The Age of Letter Writing may have drawn to an end, but the need for genuine communication -- the kind where I listen to what you're saying and respond to it, and you respond to my response, and so on -- is still very much with us. The mass media serve a purpose for sure, but their communication flows mostly in one direction. When interpersonal communication starts to look like that, we're in trouble.
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