By Alex Cantatore
Staff reporter

I seem to have developed a bit of a reputation as a tech maven during my tenure here at the Turlock Journal. I admit that it’s not entirely unwarranted, given my endless computer advice and amazing telephone-fixing capabilities.

But for all my technological know-how, I’m surprisingly old-fashioned. I would have loved to have lived in the sort of America that typified the 1950s.

I sit transfixed watching old movies where heartbroken protagonists have to place an extravagant long distance phone call to their lovers, asking for Klondike-425 as operators plug and unplug mazes of wires from cutting edge switchboards. I adore when the camera takes us to old newsrooms, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the click-clack noise of modern typewriters struggling to pound out the latest news before deadline hits.

Alright, alright, so my examples may be a little 50s tech-centric with my focus on telephones and typewriters, but I fully admit that my love affair with the earlier days does have something to do with their technology. Or, perhaps, I should say their lack of technology.

I marvel at the people of the past, their unbridled enthusiasm and astounding successes despite their reliance on vacuum tubes and mechanical solutions. I live in a state of near amazement for how people made due in the years before the advent of the computer and the cell phone.

These innovations were commonplace by the time I was in junior high. It’s tough for me to imagine a world where any answer you could need isn’t just a mouse click away.

Or even, for that matter, to imagine a world where the term “mouse” was most often used in reference to a small rodent with notably twitchy whiskers.

I understand the reason for technology. It’s supposed to make everyday tasks easier.

But I sometimes wonder if we’ve gone too far in that direction. If things have become too easy, too immediate, and we Americans, long forced into a hard-working diligence by the sheer size of our country and the difficulty of even the simplest task, have simply become lazy.

My mind drifts again to old movies.

I love those scenes where a pained woman, torn by distance, time, and longing for the far off object of her affection, pulls out her secret box of love letters. How she pours over every word and phrase, soaking in his adoring words, painting a mental picture of his once familiar face.

But who writes letters anymore? Who needs to write letters? And who takes the time?

So we send e-mails. We send text messages. We send instant messages.

We don’t even send invitations, we send evites. We don’t deal with Hallmark, we go to hallmark.com.

We send things that take us less time, are more direct, and get straight to the point.

Long distance phone calls, once an exorbitant luxury, are now included free with any cell phone plan. Why write at all when you can call?

But, at the same time, there’s something to say about the appeal of letters. About their permanence; their inherent testimony to the way that things once were.

My phone, a relatively high-end model from a few years past, can save a mere 130 text messages. I’ve lost far too many great little words of affection that exist only in my memories now, clouded by the passage of time and my hazy moods.

But it’s astonishing how effective I am at saving tiny scraps of paper with hastily written notes on them.

I pin them on walls, I throw them in boxes or bags or envelopes, and then, admittedly, I really don’t look at them. But they’re still there, waiting.

It’s not until I move and I’m forced to look through all the junk I’ve accumulated throughout the years that I realize just how much time people have devoted to little old me. I still find it incredible that people make the effort to create, for me, physical proof of their respect and feelings.

It takes me forever to pack as I read and re-read each little note, and wish that for each word I had a hundred more to save forever. I mourn the personal histories lost in long-closed e-mail accounts and deleted voice mails.

But then I think back to those little boxes of love notes in the movies. Of the tens - at best - of letters that were all the female lead had to remind her of her beloved, of the sheer impossibility of talking to him no matter how much she wanted to or how hard she cried.

So why should we hold these antiquated means of communication to a higher standard? Is it the long-held axiom that absence makes the heart grow fonder? Is it that the messages somehow mean more when one takes the time to physically write them down?

Or is it that we’re better off being able to do what we want, when we want, and enjoy the people in our lives first hand rather than through letters?

One of the maxims that the founders of Atari lived by was to, “work smarter not harder.” And perhaps that’s what we’re doing now.

My best friend in the whole wide world is off in South Korea right now, studying abroad.

His mom called my house one day to see if I wanted to join them for a big family dinner upon his return. When I told her that I was talking to him about it right then on the Internet, she was astonished.

Despite the distance, we’ve been able to talk several times a week through Google Chat. We’ve been able to retain the immediacy of face-to-face conversations even though we’re half a world apart, separated by an 11-hour plane trip, something that never would have been possible even 20 years ago.

Perhaps today’s preferred methods lack the romanticism of letters. They may be deficient in the permanence of physicality and the depth of emotion required for sitting alone and pouring one’s heart onto the page.

But perhaps the immediacy and ease of communication outweighs the fleeting nature of phone calls, texts, and IMs in the long run.

Perhaps our flawed memories truly surpass old notes as the best mirror to the past. Perhaps our new technology really does make things easier, not just to communicate, but to treat the past as we’d like it to have been rather than as it was.

But I, for one, am going to hold onto all my tattered notes and letters. Even though I blissfully may not have the whole picture, I’m going to enjoy the fragments that I have.

To contact Alex Cantatore, please send a letter to 138 S. Center St., Turlock, CA 95380.

Originally published in the Turlock Journal 8/8/2008.
Retrieved from the Turlock Journal Web site.