Gather round kids! I have a story to tell ya. I remember a time when I used to keep in touch with friends over an old fashioned method called email! And my messages would be paragraphs long, not sentences! Those were the days...I'm only half kidding about my fond remembrances, because in reality the way we communicate has changed drastically in only a few short years. I haven't sent an email to a friend in probably three years. With Facebook, Twitter, Google Chat, and texting there really isn't much need to communicate through a format that is better suited for a longer conversation. Who has the time? This Wall Street Journal article discusses the end of the email era and points us in the direction of where the future of communication is going.
In a not surprising nutshell, it seems that we are heading down a road filled with briefer and briefer bursts of communication. In addition to this (considerably less formal) communication style, our way of getting in contact with one another also involves being able to take in a snapshot of a person's life at any given moment. Apparently email was too impersonal, cause with that service how could you tell what your friend's new favorite bands are or what she's planning on doing this evening? You couldn't! It was anarchy! With Facebook and Twitter we can know almost every mundane detail about a person, whereas email usually just got to the point.
How strange is it that email now seems to be a long forgotten method of getting in touch with someone? With the rapid pace at which technology has developed it seems as though email has become the new letter. It might just be because I'm turning 20 next week, but I really feel fucking old.
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