The Pecan Park Eagle

In homage to Salvador Dali, the artist who bent time, life, and human perception to the possibility of a new day over the horizon.

Irony of ironies.

As we were concluding our 60th Reunion of the 1952 St. Christopher’s 8th Grade Class this past Sunday, I thought it might be a good time to update and obtain accurate e-mail addresses from some of my fellow classmates. Things were going fine until I reached one old friend who responded in a friendly way as follows:

“No, you cannot have my e-mail address because I don’t have one and never will. If you want to talk with me, just pick up the phone and call. I don’t have time for any of that (newfangled) stuff.”

I was a little shocked, but not surprised. Some people are still offended by the idea of e-mail contact as cold and impersonal because it allows for no immediate chew-the-fat social time. I’m sure that a century ago there were still people who took offense at telephone call attempts from anyone other than immediate family:

“No, you cannot have my telephone number, so, please don’t ask again. If you want to talk with me, drop by the house sometime and leave your calling card. I’ll let you know if I want to talk with you.”

E-mail, the Internet, the computer – these things are just too “new” for some people, even though the home computer has now been around since its primitive days in the early 1980s and the Internet since the 1990s. To some people, they are still “strange visitors from a strange land” – and with much power to evoke intimidation.

Fifteen years ago, I cut bait in my private office from a human answering service that then handled a pretty high volume of calls for my consultant services. I did so for reasons of cost effectiveness and the availability of new answering machine technology that would allow me to handle the same calls in virtually the same way in my own voice at hardly any cost once I got past the reasonable price of the equipment at the original point of sale.

It worked great. My fears that people might be offended by a recorded message were quickly dispelled. More places were doing the same thing in the mid-1990s and the expectations of callers were adjusting to the change as simply a shift to the “new normal.”

Only thing is, “voice mail” service from AT&T and other phone company providers soon proved even better and we all moved to that generic option for quality, price, and the lack of maintenance that came with answering machine tape purchases and equipment breakdowns.

Oh, yes. – Back to “irony of ironies.” My classmate said he didn’t have time for e-mail. The irony is – we only were able to organize our reunion so quickly because of Internet e-mail – not because of the telephone. And because of the e-mail technology, I was able to write a column on the reunion that appeared on the Internet for the whole world to see yesterday – and on the very first morning that followed the event.

I was also able to send eleven individual people photos by e-mail attachment to all classmates who have the Internet. My friend who declared his lack of time for the Internet (and here comes that irony winger again) did not get these for some simple reasons. (1) He doesn’t have the Internet and an e-mail box that could receive them; (2) I don’t have time to go buy the photo paper I would need to print them out at some extra expense to me; and (3) I really don’t have time this week to package hard copy photos (that I don’t possess anyway) and take them down to the post office and stand in line to pay the postage on sending these out by “snail mail.”

Because of the Internet e-mail option, it is possible today to send something like a 500-page manuscript to your editor, publisher, or printing typesetter and get an almost instant response the same way. The net result is faster communication with greater clarity of purpose and better positive movement of production.

The quill, typewriters, telephones, and the post office could never bring us all together quite so magnificently.

As for the straight communication of information, like the time and date for an important meeting, it happens instantly with those are Internet-wired and accustomed to checking their e-mail boxes daily. What slows you down are the people who don’t check their e-mail boxes – and those who only have phones and may not even have a voice mail option.

After a while, it makes you wish that people who want get involved in any kind of serious dynamic group action in 2012 would either get themselves wired to the task before they sign up – or else – just hold off until they are.

It’s nothing personal. It’s just how it is. If we want to fly with the eagles these days, we’ve got to have a craft that will get us off the ground. And that craft is no longer a landline phone at home without any voice mail.