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...it is a dark and stormy night. The candle light, flickering fickle at best, watches over a sincere effort to craft even more sincere correspondence. The ink well is full and the feather is focused..."not a drip to be found this time...Huzzah!" The last paragraph appears as slowly as the first, signifying the conclusion of several difficult hours, some of those hours being closer to humid than hard. But it's worth it; there is a lot to talk about, all of it exciting.As the hour becomes late, the fingers begin to lock-up, the vision starts to blur, and the neck is in need of relief. Another calligraphic stroke of the finest penmanship the world has ever seen and the letter will be finished...
...Damn, it surely would have been easier to send a text message."
We text like it's breathing. A simple act, done more times than we can remember, all of it communication floating through air as digital signals. The funny thing is, texting, in all its digital, taken-for-granted, non-vocal glory is nothing more than what our ancestors did with a quill...writing letters.
the quill
In 1765, you wrote letters, pages of correspondence designed to keep in touch for personal or professional reasons; it was a vital artery for successful communication. But it wasn't quick: imagine the drive from your home to the nearest town...then imagine that trip by horse and carriage, and this time to a different state. That's how long it took to deliver letters; there were no planes or trucks, just hooves and sails. Times were tough; but still, people wrote.
QWERTY
Fast-forward a few hundred years. Watch pens be replaced with typewriters, then computers, then email and cell phones, then...yes, you guessed it...text messages. Welcome to "communication via QWERTY"*
Of course, text messages aren't traditional letters. The most obvious difference, aside from the lack of paper, is that they are nowhere near as long and they are not written in a single stretch of time. For most, text messages are sent periodically throughout the day, and each are generally only a few lines in length. But aren't text messages letters, in a way? Texting...texting (v.): the act of sending text messages; something our ancestors couldn't possibly imagine doing in their spare time; a lazy and lovely feature of contemporary communication...is the act of composing letters and sentences for the purpose of communication. Period. Sure, contemporary society uses keys instead of quills but what's the difference? Should there be a difference? Yes, and no.
There should be a difference because people should remember not to take for granted the act of texting. Through text messages, people can communicate quickly, efficiently, and conveniently; the value of that is priceless. But there also shouldn't be a difference because if there is, then we degrade the value of our communication. Nobody should try to dumb-down texting just because typing happens to be so much easier, and quicker, than writing with a pen (or a quill). The words are the same, they still carry meaning, and they are still important.
Communication has come a long way in the last few hundred years. But the year 1765...it's arbitrary; it could be replaced with 1665, or even 1265. It wouldn't make a dramatic difference because the point is still the same: texting is writing. So text till your fingers fall off, write your digital letters and send them through your portable phone. Just don't forget to type "Huzzah!" when you read good news!
*qwerty is a reference to the typical keyboard; "q-w-e-r-t-y" are the six letters in the upper-left of a keyboard
