That’s from this post by Alan Jacobs, commenting on an essay from the NYRB by Edward Mendelson. It seems like a good question to me, though I am not sure that so many people would find these scenarios so different. But, assuming that’s accurate, an obvious difference comes to mind: screens watch you back and paper doesn’t. The screen reader seems more vulnerable, and reminds us of our own vulnerability to the unseen watchers who have inserted themselves between us and our correspondents. There is a sense of helplessness, an inability to protect ourselves from exposure in the midst of wanting to sustain a private yet social life.
The “zombies” enthralled with phones perhaps seem subjugated by a device and by the industry that made it; people reading letters don’t appear to be in the helpless thrall of paper manufacturers.
It’s not just that the devices are watching us as we watch them. There are active systems in our phones, tools that embody the premises and practices of their designers. Email is a very different experience than voice, or Tumblr, or Facebook. The agency of the postal service that distributes the post cards and letters in the scenario is at quite a remove, and has been so long in our society and civilization to be as foundational as gravity, or money, or agriculture. But these newer tools aren’t foundational to that extent, at least not yet. There are those of us walking the earth who recall a time before email, before blogs, before cell phones, before all this digital correspondence. We are still unsettled on which of these will become foundational, like eyeglasses and shoes, and which will fade away, like telegrams and carrier pigeons.
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/151193123437
