Back to the tangibles.
The feel of book in your hand and the "fffwit" sound as you turn the page...the unsuspected joy across someone's face when they checked their mailbox and found a letter from an old friend...
These and many others are just some of the things we as a culture and species are losing. Email has replaced regular mail and in doing so it has destroyed the excitement of communication. So much is connected with that tangible element. In the mail's case, you lose the effort that was put behind it, that personal touch you got to witness in each letter. The speed and ease of email has forced it to become a "without thought" function that we all just do. It's like breathing.
Reading in general has gone that way also. And now with products like the Kindle by Amazon (which i admit is really cool), all need to physically own and pick up to read a book is gone. I fear that with that we will lose the passion and commitment a story/book deserves when being read. Instead of delving so deep in that your mind even makes up details the author didn't describe, instead we are soon to become people who read books at fast speeds, and more to pass the time than to enjoy it.
Even just hanging out with friends & family have become a victim of this loss of tangibility. Granted lives are busy (i'm hugely aware of this), but people keep in touch so easily now with IM, Facebook, email, etc. that we don't have as big of a drive to schedule time to hang out...or visit. I know I myself find that to be the case, and I accept it because of the hectic life going on around me and all of us...but I often wish it were like back in the day. Instead we've moved so face in our technology and our 'wants' that we aren't even living in the "now" world...but rather in the "next" world. It's making us not appreciate what we have and how far we've come, and making us forget where it use to be...we as a whole just want to know what's next, when is the newer, faster, better version coming out?
But, maybe thats just me...thoughts? feel free to write it in a letter. =)
