A friend told me that he had recently deleted the email application on his phone. “I loved in the past, get home and check the emails – there would be new messages!” He rhapsodized. I felt the pang. Not only would there be new messages, but often, in the first days of email, they were real electronic letters of friends, filled with emotional life updates and takeoff accounts. Before sending SMS, email was an effective way to communicate, and the way we communicated was in sentences, paragraphs, fully developed thoughts. We had not yet seen the future where “K” or an Emoji de Pouce-Haut was considered a communication.
I am always excited when people tell me that they have deleted an application: another tiny reduction in the time that my orbit will spend on their phone. Infinitesimal, perhaps, but moving in the right direction. We brill out with these devices that have our attention, we take a little control.
But I am particularly interested in the changes that can bring back part of the magic of pre-scartphone communication, when writing letters were not picturesque and e-mails were miracles. I wrote on my nostalgia for telephone cabins, recommending that we borrow some of the parameters they have provided and introduce them into this century (say, containing our private conversations in private spaces).
Even if we are nostalgic for ancient times, it is difficult to reinstitute old habits. Deleting your phone’s emails can free you from the constraint to check it all the time, but that doesn’t mean you will go home to a reception box full of satisfactory missives from your friends. There is a good chance that they have sent you SMS all day, and your reception box is actually full of spam and invoices.
In an attempt to reduce the grip of my phone on my life, I suggested once to a friend that each time we wanted to send an SMS, we send a postcard instead. I think we tried this for a week before admitting that it was an ineffective way to chat. I was aware of the nature of artistic projection of the proposal from the start and I did not think that our experience would replace the SMS, but I hoped that postcards would be so delicious that we could at least a parallel flow of slow communication . It did not happen.
A few weeks ago, I made a phone call to a friend without warning, someone I had never talked about on the phone before. It was a bit reckless, a little rude, which made me want to do it even more, because it seems ridiculous that someone is somehow controversial. It should be wonderful that someone wants to hear your voice, that he thought of you and wanted to connect.
Although I have a few people I talk to regularly on the phone, most of the people I consulted consider a non -invited as hostile telephone call. They assume that there is an emergency if they receive a call from someone with whom they do not have a regular telephone relationship.
My recent surprise phone call was annoying, as I suspected that it could be. People had the bandwidth to receive phone calls from anyone at any time, even without the caller identifier. This skill set has disappeared, perhaps replaced by the ability to deal with several group texts exploding at the same time. Now, even if it is someone you are happy to hear, a surprise call looks a bit like someone who appears unexpectedly in the middle of the night.
There are a lot of ideas on how to break the dependence on the phone, but not as much to find the romance of what I come to consider as the slow era, the second half of the 20th century when the phone and the mail was our main long -distance communication means. The pain in sight of an empty mailbox was, in my memory, more than balanced by the ecstasy of the letter which finally arrived.
It is not only the healthy cadence of correspondence that we are missing now; This is the care and attention we have given it. We sat down and wrote letters and emails. We may have prepared dinner or fold the linen while we were talking on the phone, but we were literally over the time of the call. Our communication required a continuous presence and concentration on the other person.
We can certainly restore this kind of concentration with some people – I have a close friend who hates SMS, and he would be delighted if I said to myself in favor of telephone calls – but he is simply too effective to give up completely. A more conceivable option is to try to bring the kind of stable presence and all the attention I miss to conversations in person.
If most of our remote communication is intended to be mediated by technology, let’s see how much we can make our non -relevant phones when we are really together. Turn off the alerts, completely turn off the damn things and really practice. We believe that we are natural in visual contact, to listen before formulating an answer, to sit together in silence. But as the preparation of telephone calls and the entertaining delivery of voicemail, these skills also atrophy.
The week in culture
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The main prosecutor of Adams’ investigation wrote in his resignation letter to Bove: “I expect you to finally find someone who is sufficient, or enough coward, to submit your request. But it was never going to be me.
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The eminent Democrats of New York, including the Lieutenant-Governor and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called Adams to resign. They accused him of having adopted President Trump’s policies to escape legal problems.
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📺 “The white lotus”: Another beautiful location. Another collection of rich guests and tired employees. Another mysterious crime. Season 3 of this dark comedy of the writer-director Mike White, which begins Sunday on HBO and Max, takes place in a wellness complex on a jewel of an island in the Gulf of Thailand. There will be rifles, monkeys and beautiful sunsets. The distribution of this season includes Walton Goggins, Parker Posey and Lisa of the K-Pop Blackpink group.
Oat cookies with chocolate chips
If you love the nubby chewing of oat cookies, but do not think that something is qualified as dessert if he has no chocolate, Geneviève Ko has the treat for you: Oat cookies with chocolate chips. Made with just enough dough to bind oats, they are a perfect display for the real star star, this generous handful of chocolate chips. Cook them over the weekend so that you can snack them all week-hidden in lunch boxes, savored like a snack in the middle of the afternoon, or for dessert, of course, with a big glass milk.
REAL ESTATE
N ° 1 Auburn vs n ° 2 alabama, university basketball for men: Before today, the southeast conference obsessed with football had never had a top two in basketball. To what extent the conference is therefore exciting that the conference is this confrontation between the competitors in the state. Auburn and Alabama have the two best offenses in the country, writes Brendan Marks of athletics, which means that this game is not only historic – it should also be really exciting. Today at 4 p.m. in the East on ESPN
