Summer Romance and why we don't write letters

So, first of all, I love computers, the internet, and technology in general. I genuinely believe everything positive said about the information age. We are democratizing information and education worldwide, and it is getting to the people it needs to. If anyone has doubts about this, visit a rural town in the mountains near Kunming and witness the 90% cell phone ownership, at least 30% of which includes internet connected Palm Pilots and other such devices. So tech is good, tech is great, especially my new macbook, but of course, there are problems. These problems are myriad and well discussed, but I'm going to talk about one of them in particular. The negative that I focus on is that the internet has taken the shortening of the attention span caused by movies and TV (two other things I love) to the next level, and here's what I mean by that: TV and movies shortened our attention spans for the consumption of media and information, as well as turning human relationships into consumer transactions. It should be noted that this would probably have happened anyway, perhaps it's the natural evolution of a market economy, but video media certainly sped it up. What technology has done is shorten our attention span of human relationships. This is both exhilarating and terrifying.

As you can probably tell, I like My-Space. I also like Facebook, and shamelessly check it every time I log on to the internet. I don't think this is bad per se, but it's probably not good, and that's because we have lost the capacity to have relationships with people we are instantly able to connect with. One thing I was forced to do as an English major was read letters. Lots of letters, most of them terrible, were correspondences between intellectual writers, and they were mostly dull. However, I got the feeling from these letters that these people though about philosophy and meaning constantly (and they probably did) and that we don't at all (at least not after college). Now in itself, this is probably ok. For one thing, the world is more understandable now than then, and many of the big questions have been answered. Modern philosophy has more to do with the analysis of current events and culture than metaphysical existence. And again, this is probably ok, and a natural evolution of society, but it has destroyed letter writing.

I like writing letters, even though I don't do it very often. This is because it is inconvenient as hell in comparison with every other form of contact. Intellectuals have been bitching about this for awhile, though for the wrong reasons. E-mail isn't less personal than a full on letter. Or, at least, it doesn't have to be. I have scribed emails every bit as detailed, concentrated and eloquent as letters and they have been received and appreciated as such. The real problem with this lack of letter writing is that when you read these old letters (up until around 1890) you realize that these people who had such intricate philosophical and personal relationships almost never saw each other. Henry James's "BFF" was someone he saw probably less than a month per year, yet this in no way affected the intensity of their relationship. We can't operate like that anymore. We need response; we need contact. And that contact has to be physical emotional because TV has trained us to be even more visceral of beings than we were to start with. We now believe that the only way you can truly communicate with someone is face to face, and that's because it's the only way we observe other relationships, and the only way we can process them. This is the part that IS bad for us, and that's because we can no longer have intense relationships with people that we can't see constantly, at least not over long periods of time, which is bad because it shrinks our emotional world along with the real one. This is the problem with those fun catch-phrases "the world is getting smaller" and "the world is flat": as a result of the world shrinking we need it to be smaller and smaller. Our worlds now only exist within the realm of whom we can and cannot immediately see and come into contact with because A.) the internet has made us feel like we can always be in contact with everyone (which is partially true) and B.) we assume that everyone has access to travel because it is so efficient an somewhat affordable (which isn't true). Reason B. is also affected by the internet as we simply psychologically don't see the world as huge and vast and unconquerable anymore.

I started thinking about all of this because I just engaged in one of those old world things, one of those relationships that occurs for one month a year, and yet I know I will not write exquisite, metaphysical love letters to the other person all year, because that concept now seems almost stalker-y pathetic and completely outmoded, even if it isn't. This summer romance was honestly one of the most powerful times in my life and realization of human relationships, and it was only a week. -Another problem with the world shrinking is that time is too. We now unconsciously equate the time spent on something with its value and effect, longer being greater, even though we all know it's not strictly true. The longer you live in a foreign culture the more you adapt to it, but you don't necessarily actually like it more than the place you went for a one week vacation, or even a three night bender for that matter.- I feel emotionally, intellectually, and physically connected with someone I doubt will be a permanent fixture in my life (inasmuch as I doubt I will ever live in the same place as her). This is mostly an issue of circumstance, and an argument could be made to me that I'm romanticizing this relationship because it was short-lived and isolated, but I know that’s not true. No matter how cynical we all get, no matter how few letters we write, we will always have the capacity to feel deeply for people we almost never see. We just won’t think about it that much because of all the people we can see. The result of this is that now I feel like Montaigne or someone, because I feel such a connection and cannot actualize it, which is to say that (also like Montaigne) some of the happiest moments in my life now make me sad. This isn’t because of nostalgia (well, I suppose it must be partially nostalgia) but because I know that they’re meaning will fade into the blue and white headers of Zuckerman productions, a company run by a guy my age (which is also depressing). I guess the only thing to do is spread My-Space, and Facebook and Skype as far and wide as possible, if only so that we can all list our favorite quotes and be amused at them, then saddened by the fact that none of us actually say anything relevant anymore. We now need these things to fill us with the only kind of long distance contact we can still understand: superficial, anti-intellectual drivel. Oh well, I wonder if anyone has posted new photos with me in them?...