Emails and letters - Topic 4

I chose to compose an email to my wife, and a letter to my Grandma.


When choosing the two people, I had a difficult time thinking of someone I still communicate with through snail mail. I do send occasional letters to my grandma on her birthday and holidays and such, but I felt that using my grandma as an example was a tired cliche, and very likely many other students would choose the same. Alas, I was not able to find any other suitable choice. I have moved towards email to such a degree that I use it nearly exclusively.

Comparing the two letters

Both letters were to family members, and the content of both centered on updating what was going on in my life (and theirs at the time). However, there were stark differences between the two. The letter to my grandma took some time to conceive, mostly because I had to recall where exactly we left off. I would say that I speak to my grandma once every couple of weeks (on the phone), and receive updates from other family members perhaps once a week. My wife on the other hand I speak to many times per day through various channels. The biggest difference between the letters was the length. With my grandma, was there much more content that could be discussed, and I had much more to ask since the frequency of communication is much less. With my wife, I already keep fairly well abreast of what is going on in her life, and she does the same for mine, thus there was less content.

Another facet of the email to my wife that I found interesting was that I put far less thought into composing the email, even considering the reduced content. After examining why this was so, I came to the conclusion that I felt that I could just send another email at any moment should a thought occur to me. For the snail mail, this ease of communication did not exist, thus I made sure and gave extra thought to include all that I wanted to convey.

Wood and Smith note that a large part of the attraction of the internet is the ease in which people are able to instantly find others and have interesting conversations (p.102). This point is particularly salient because I felt that I can more easily stay in contact with my wife (above and beyond the fact that she is in closer proximity to me than my grandma) and that information flowed much more efficiently.

I think that culture at large will benefit greatly from the increase and ease of communication between people. We are living in an increasingly globalized world, and the fact that we can easily communicate as a global community enriches and educates all of us. Face to face and interpersonal communication still have their place and time, but these two modes are not mutually exclusive.