I'm no Luddite, yet 18 months ago I did not even own a cell phone, much less a Blackberry, I had a barely active Facebook account, and was not LinkedIn. I was only beginning to use a digital camera. More and more of my professional work centered around website development and I used email and the Internet regularly, but I resisted the onslaught of new communications technologies. I resented the culture of obsolescence which not only valued new technologies over old ones, but seemed determined to replace other means of communication, rather than add to them.
I continue to believe that there is value in keeping an array of communication tools in our repertoire. The physical act of handwriting, for example, compels us to organize our thoughts in ways not required by composing on the computer, and the end product is unique to us, communicating something timeless about us as well as providing insight about our emotional state at the time of writing. I would even like to buy a typewriter for its smells, its bells, its manifest mechanics!
So I embrace the new technologies as additions, not replacements, for all that came before them (knowing that they, too, will become obsolete in a matter of years, if not months). The creation of this blog and a flip camcorder arrived in my house in the same day, and both promise to expand my possibilities for dynamic communication exponentially. It is an exciting time, and bound to become more exciting.
Still, nothing beats sitting down with you in real time, face to face.
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