I read an article the other day that pointed out that emailing is going out of style. It's already yesterday's news. Let me correct that last statement. I mean, it's like an old tweet or an archived web page. The phrase, "yesterday's news" is fading from usage; even the image of an old, yellowed newspaper is one that seldom comes to mind in someone younger than 50. Most young people aren't newspaper readers. Anyway, newspapers are more likely to be found on a computer or a smartphone screen than in a sloppy pile in a corner of the living room. If you're a young person, you're using Facebook or you're texting. Maybe you're tweeting. But the odds are -- you aren't checking your gmail account much.
Email, by comparison to text messaging, is taking on the role of more formal, business communication. We're in the middle of a transition, brought to us by Al Gore, or whoever it was who started linking computers together. Instead of hearing the voices, the words, the tone of speech, or experiencing the thousands of small but important clues that let us know who it is we encounter in a day, we're more likely to read their bland sentences or sentence fragments. We're living our office lives at the speed of email. Instead of being asked to think long and hard about a problem, we're expected to think quickly and solve problems within a few hours, or even within minutes. Sometimes, immediately.
Is someone you know worth more than the 140 characters that you're allowed on Twitter? Has anything of significance ever been said in 140 characters or less? Your friends on Facebook -- are they really your friends? Some of them probably are, but most are just people you know, the kind of people who fit in somewhere in your social network. But that's not the same as friends -- the people you trust with your feelings and thoughts that are important and that are difficult to speak about. Facebook chatter is the sort of casual stuff you might say to someone you see at a party.
None of this is particularly earth-shattering news, but it's a matter of suprising consequence. Who we are cannot be separated from who we communicate with, how we communicate, and what we say.
