'Is email dead already?' – my latest moment of modernity vertigo
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Version 0 of 1. I suspect I am not alone among people of a certain age in experiencing moments of modernity vertigo. They occur unexpectedly – sudden, disconcerting realisations that the ground has shifted significantly beneath one's feet. Perhaps my first moment of modernity vertigo came sometime in the mid-1980s, when I caught myself standing in front of a microwave oven shouting at it: "Come on, hurry up!" Just a few weeks ago, I felt it again. I'd been grumbling that I couldn't get hold of a family friend because he'd lost his phone. My 12-year-old pressed a button on the controller of his jumped-up Pong machine and spoke into it: "Hi, it's me. My dad wants to know if you fancy a pint later." I gawped in astonishment. This morning I read that the University of Exeter has had to employ social media operators to deal with inquiries, because increasing numbers of students will not use email, considering it too slow and unwieldy. Apparently, opening Outlook Express takes up valuable milliseconds that could otherwise be spent watching Adventure Time on Netflix. For someone of my generation, it is hard to consider this with anything other than baffled wonder. As a student in the 80s, I was forbidden from using computers to write essays, as they were considered a gift to cheats and plagiarists, and quite possibly the work of Beelzebub. When I started out in journalism in the early 90s, I would either file my articles by post or, to meet pressing deadlines, phone up an editor and read my copy down the phone while he or she typed furiously at the other end. I recall the excitement when a shop in my neighbourhood introduced a fax machine, allowing me to print out my masterpiece, walk half a mile to the newsagent and convert my words into those magical electronic whistles and beeps. It is traditional at this juncture for an old fart like me to bemoan the acceleration of our lifestyles and insist that things were better in the more leisurely old days. In the final few months of his life, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a beautiful essay explaining why he would not use email. He did not want, he explained, to lose the simple pleasures of walking to the post office, buying a stamp, flirting gently with the woman behind the counter and going about his day. He put up a convincing case, but when all is said and done, it was bollocks. The convenience and speed of new communications has, in my case at least, served the principal purpose of creating considerably more time for staring out of the window and watching squirrels run along the fence. I am sure the great man would have approved. Despite the headlines, it is likely that Sir Steve Smith, Exeter's vice-chancellor, is wrong: email is not dead, it still serves a valuable, irreplaceable function. What is dying is the clear distinction between different formats of electronic messaging. Just as it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between televisions, telephones, computers and the various gadgets that fill the gaps, so too is it becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish an email from an SMS or an instant message from a social media update. This convergence of technology represents a significant paradox of our age: the route to a life of simplicity demands that we navigate increasingly complex obstacles. The more fleet of foot among us can easily consolidate their diverse communications into one mailbox, picking them up on whichever gadget is closest to hand. Crusty old souls like me, and bureaucratic institutions like universities, have little choice but to shuffle along in their wake. This is as it should be. A society that is progressing as it should, must leave behind the ways of older generations. The occasional lurching stomach of modernity vertigo is a small price to pay for progress. Now if you will excuse me, I think I just spotted a squirrel. |