The Death of the Letter
Blogs are killers. Not bloggers, by any means – the writers themselves are generally harmless (even if the pen is mightier than the sword), but in transforming communications, blogs are the killers of personal correspondence. Blogs are the death of the letter.
What’s even more curious is that the rise of blogging both signals and facilitates a significant social change. For centuries people confided their personal thoughts, desires, intentions and general feelings to their correspondents. Remember, Choderlos de Laclos' “Dangerous Liaisons”, constructed completely from letters? And how about volumes of Lord Byron’s or Mark Twain’s correspondence?
What about the idea of a pen pal? Do you have one right now? Did you correspond with someone regularly just a few years ago? I certainly did. In fact, this post is a result of me rereading some of the letters I wrote in 2003/04 to Alexei Parshchikov, a Russian poet living in Germany.
Letters to the editor, which are more like “emails to the editor” now, as the electronic form replaced the physical, are still in existence, but have also evolved. They’ve become more of a “forum-around-the-editor”, not direct correspondence. Hell, the whole idea of an editor was really deflated with the rise of blogosphere.
Some industry insiders have described blogs and wikis as solutions to the email problem. Of course, there is spam, but as emails are just letters in cyberspace, blogs are out to rid the world of personal correspondence. Blogs become the death of the letter.
In conclusion, letters are private by nature and privacy of thought does not exist in blogosphere by definition (it is paradoxical, as all thoughts in the blogosphere are private). Then again, if letters were representative of a society of individuals and empires, does the appearance of the blogosphere mirror the society characterized by lack of privacy, exploding social pressures, and growing terrorism? Am I making the world a better place by blogging or adding to the downfall of the Western world?
What’s even more curious is that the rise of blogging both signals and facilitates a significant social change. For centuries people confided their personal thoughts, desires, intentions and general feelings to their correspondents. Remember, Choderlos de Laclos' “Dangerous Liaisons”, constructed completely from letters? And how about volumes of Lord Byron’s or Mark Twain’s correspondence?
What about the idea of a pen pal? Do you have one right now? Did you correspond with someone regularly just a few years ago? I certainly did. In fact, this post is a result of me rereading some of the letters I wrote in 2003/04 to Alexei Parshchikov, a Russian poet living in Germany.
Letters to the editor, which are more like “emails to the editor” now, as the electronic form replaced the physical, are still in existence, but have also evolved. They’ve become more of a “forum-around-the-editor”, not direct correspondence. Hell, the whole idea of an editor was really deflated with the rise of blogosphere.
Some industry insiders have described blogs and wikis as solutions to the email problem. Of course, there is spam, but as emails are just letters in cyberspace, blogs are out to rid the world of personal correspondence. Blogs become the death of the letter.
In conclusion, letters are private by nature and privacy of thought does not exist in blogosphere by definition (it is paradoxical, as all thoughts in the blogosphere are private). Then again, if letters were representative of a society of individuals and empires, does the appearance of the blogosphere mirror the society characterized by lack of privacy, exploding social pressures, and growing terrorism? Am I making the world a better place by blogging or adding to the downfall of the Western world?
posted by spiodin at 8:36 PM
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