Confessions of a digital non-native

Communications revolution: the smartphone changed everything. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP

The first decade of the 21st century delivered a powerful technological and cultural revolution, the remnants of which live on via the penchants of those whose adult (or at least working) lives have straddled this time. It was in this decade that the smartphone was developed, along with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Meanwhile, televisions went from fat to flat and levitated from floor to mid-wall.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was also in this decade that the handwritten letter’s soulful retreat from everyday life gathered pace. Texting took off, and less nimble-fingered texters no longer had to toggle numbers to secure letters to communicate a thought. There are some who think this technology has somehow lessened our command of the written word, that our writing skills have diminished. I disagree. The volume of written communication has exploded with all this new technology via texts, emails and social media messaging. More people communicate by writing now than ever before.

The way we write has changed accordingly, of course. Text has evolved its own language, lol. The letter’s salutation of the formal Dear has been replaced by the far friendlier Hi or by the even more casual Hey. No one (that I communicate with) signs off with Sincerely, but rather with Regards or Cheers. My preference is for Kind Regards.

The sheer volume of our written communications demands a streamlined language. And while I’m totally on board with any new technology that enables greater communication, I still carry the lessons, the guardrails, the principles of writing from a time when letters and essays were written longhand and corrected with the aid of Liquid Paper. I wonder whether others will connect with these “rules” that echo down the decades from the pre-digital era.

I blame Steve Jobs, the late founder of Apple, who dreamt up or at least approved the name iPhone. And of course wherever the iPhone goes, others surely follow. First there was eCommerce and now, courtesy of the Covid pandemic, there is a new vaccine called, or derived from, a process known as mRNA. I cannot start a sentence with either mRNA, eCommerce or iPhone.

I have issues with other digital devices. I cannot leave the television volume on anything other than a number ending in five or zero. These increments make sense to me, plus it’s tidy. To leave the volume on a prime number is just asking for trouble. The same goes for the stopwatch on my phone; while cooking I will use it to measure out, say, a five-minute interval. At the end of this time I will reset it to zero. I cannot continue with life knowing that somewhere deep inside my phone there’s a stopwatch ticking, wasting energy, careening towards highly volatile big numbers that can lead to nowhere good. No, the ticking must stop, and the stopwatch must be returned to zero.

I know these are silly peccadilloes, carry-overs if you like from a pre-digital era, but they also show how change is managed and processed. For digital natives who know no other way, on this issue at least the way forward is clear and clean. But for others whose adult working lives straddle periods of seismic social change, it can be a struggle to let go of the pre-digital world.

For the most part, we all adapt quite well to new ways of doing things. But sometimes, often when you least expect it, something pops up to remind you (and many others) of how much things have changed.