View from the Green

By Colleen Gundlach
Developing and editing an issue of Norfolk Now always has its rewards and challenges. Editing this month’s issue was an especially thought provoking process in many ways. From seeing first hand the dedication of a group of townspeople working to provide affordable housing to people less fortunate than they, to reviewing the evolution of a school regionalization process, it has been a fascinating few weeks of preparation.
But an hour spent interviewing my neighbor, Peter Ketchum, for Norfolk Now has elicited a meditation for me on the way we communicate in this new century. He raised the question of whether or not technology has made us become less, rather than more connected. Today we communicate in short, quick spurts, he contends, citing the social networking site Twitter as a good example. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Earlier generations had pen pals. Mine was from France. And Germany. And Maysville, Kentucky. Had quite a few pen pals, actually. The point is, we used to write. We would choose our best stationery and put pen to paper to pour out our thoughts. We would write thank you notes and invitations, birthday cards and journals. Today’s generation may do the same thing, but with a keyboard instead of paper. Now the fast pace of keying the words outraces the slow, thoughtful process of handwriting. But is this necessarily bad?
Changes have occurred in the way we read and what we read. To me, there is nothing like holding a book when perusing it. There is something about the feel of the pages and the scent of the paper that makes reading both a tactile and an intellectual process. Whether reading a newspaper, magazine or book, I much prefer the hardcopy over the electronic one, the hardcover book over the Kindle. That is a personal preference, but does this mean that electronic versions are not good?
I agree with Peter that we tend to “speak” electronically in a shorter, more clipped manner, in “tweets,” (though I prefer Facebook myself). I think we have to write more quickly because we have so much more writing to do. Now the social networking sites allow us to connect with people from our past (remember the trombone player from high school? He’s in the Boston Symphony now) with whom, chances are, we would never be in touch right now without these sites.
We communicate quickly with our cell phones and our text messages and our e-mails. But has that made us less connected? Think about communications in Norfolk alone. How many Lions Club minutes have been dispersed to twenty people in the click of a mouse? If we need to call a meeting of the Town Committee (either one), do we have to make ten phone calls or do we send one e-mail? And how else could so many townspeople from so many different social circles and backgrounds all participate together in producing Norfolk Now?
While the electronic world has changed the way we communicate, I have to admit that it has crossed gender, class and intellectual lines and has opened lines of communications in ways that my pen pals and I could only imagine. I’ve decided, Peter, that as long as the Norfolk Library continues to offer good old-fashioned hardcover books in addition to the downloadable versions, and pens and paper can still be found when we want them, then bring on the technology. It is not necessarily a bad thing after all.