I think a different version of Sunday's essay, which focused on the unknown cognitive effects of internet use, would have included some thoughts regarding the known behavioral changes induced by the technology. Take email, for example - thanks to this feature of the internet, I can now get in touch with a wider range of people in my life than at any point in human history, and my messages can have a density of information that is staggering when compared to other options such as the written letter. If I am in a hurry, I can send the barest communication in the same amount of time it would have taken me to dial the numbers into a rotary phone. The email is, without question, one of the most significant inventions of my lifetime.
Or perhaps I should say, without dispute, for I do have questions. Emails are an immeasurably valuable tool for communicating with the necessary fringe figures in my life who, necessarily, I keep on the fringes - recruiters, development officers, various administrators and bureaucrats. It's also highly useful for trivial communications with more important people, such as sending copies of the same party invitation to a guest list, which you might have done in those heady days before hosting parties became a public health felony. But what about all the other ways that I use email (and its annoying sidekick, the text message)? What about the other ways email has changed my behavior?
I see in hindsight that all along there has been a certain communication creep regarding how I use these tools, specifically in how their utility for interacting with unimportant people has convinced me of its appropriateness for dealing with far greater concerns. There is something like an ancient riddle here - how important are the most important people in my life if I communicate with them in the same way I communicate with my landlord? I suppose like any renter, I am simply less invested in the arrangement, and make the end an inevitability. Congrats on the new job, how's the new city, sorry for your loss - these messages are not the point, and never were, until technology invented a lowest common denominator for human interaction.
