Money is Everything

Do you remember in olden tymes, when we humans used to communicate in a wide variety of methods?  We used to talk of course, between and among ourselves. Yeah, if we were with other humans, we would actually speak with one another, without staring at a little handheld device.  And mail. Remember mail? You would take a piece of paper and a pen, well sometimes a pencil, but mainly a pen. More lasting image. And you would think of things to say to someone you know who was not sitting in the same room, or maybe even the same village. And you would compose a thing called a letter. A letter contained your thoughts about some subject or set of subjects, maybe even the weather. And you would place your “letter” in an envelope, write down the address to which you would like the letter to be delivered, and then place a thing called a stamp on the envelope as a way of paying for someone to hand deliver the letter.  Think of that. Isn’t that amazing? Your handwritten message would be hand carried and delivered personally to a person far away.

And then there was that system called the telephone. Remember telephones? They were devices that had kind of a base with a round thingie on it with numbers from 0 to 9 on it. And then it had another device that fit on top, and that device had a little speaker and a little microphone.  And you would dial a person’s “number” (everyone with a phone was assigned a multidigit number). And on their end, their device would sound a ringing noise repeatedly until they picked up the device with the speaker and microphone. Usually, they would talk into their device and say something like, “Hello”. And then you would say something on the other end, beginning another thing called a conversation.  Yeah, you would actually speak with someone, even though they were not in the same room.  Amazing, huh? And because there were not very many lines open, people would share their phone line, using something called a “party line”. Yeah, you might pick up your hand device and hear someone already talking to someone else. And you were expected to place your device down, or “hang up”, so they could finish their private talk.

Now typically, people only wrote these letters or called someone on a telephone if they actually knew them. Sometimes you might call a stranger, but not often.

So, humans actually used these methods to communicate thoughts from one person to another.

After some time, commercial companies caught onto these communication devices, and they might send you a thing called a “bill”, or a statement claiming that you owed them money for some reason. Now usually, companies did not call someone just to tell them about something they wished to sell them. That would have been stupid, huh?

And then, sometime in the middle of the 20^th century, some clever dudes invented things called “computers”.  Now, at the start, only a few people purchased these computer devices.  And the devices included a thing called a keyboard (sort of like a typewriter), a little visual screen that would show you what you were typing, and then a large box that had within it a bunch of electrical thingies that no one understood—well, almost no one.

And what would you do with that computer thing?  Well, for one thing, you could use it as a sort of typewriter. Yeah, you could actually press keys on the keyboard, and letters would appear on the screen. So, you could type a letter, instead of using a pen and paper. Now, when you were done, you still typically had to use a printing device to print your letter, and then use that envelope and stamp to send off your letter.  But then some clever dudes invented a ghostly thing called the World Wide Web. Yeah, the Web was this thing that you would never actually see or touch.  You would plug your computer into a device that somehow connected you into that ghostly thing called “The Web”. And then, they went even farther and invented a shadowy thing called “Compuserve”. And if you typed in some special address like thing on your screen, it would connect you to this Compuserve. Once there, you could actually send a message (not a letter) to someone you knew who was also connected to this Compuserve Web place.  And it would be almost like you had typed a letter and had it hand delivered, except you never left your room.

Now this really revolutionized communications around the world, yeah, even more than within your village.  Gradually, you gained the ability to communicate with people very far away, something you might do with those letters, but most people refrained.  In those olden tymes, my wife and I, before we were married, because we lived 3000 miles apart while I was in college, used to put pen to paper and write and send off actual letters daily—yeah, that’s every day.

But back to Compuserve. At the beginning, people used to communicate with other friends, or business colleagues only.  But then, slowly, companies got wind of this thing called the Web.  And they began placing themselves on this Web. Over time, this Web became itself a “place” you might visit.  And why would you visit, “The Web”? Well, slowly, as companies caught onto it, new places formed on this Web, places you could visit, maybe a newspaper, for example. Yeah, the New York Times placed itself on The Web. And then finally, many, many folks, humans, joined this Web thing.  And everyone began using it as a mode of communications, and as a mode for investigating new Web Places, and companies.  Folks began joining things called “E-Mail” services, where, instead of your home address, you could give friends your “E-Mail” address, and they could send you messages instead of letters.

So, then as the Web systems matured, and more entities joined, we had a pretty amazing ability to communicate with one another. We still had the mail system, where postmen hand delivered actual mail to your house, we still had the telephone, and then we had this Web. Then even more amazing, someone developed a device called a “bagphone”. What was that, you might ask? Well, it was actually a telephone, and it sort of looked like the old fashioned telephones, but you carried it around in a bag, and you could actually make a call while driving your car.  Think about that. A phone you could carry with you.

But did we stop there? No, of course not. Those bagphones were too big and too clumsy looking, so folks invented small things first called flip-phones, cuz they could be folded in half so as to fit into your pocket or your purse.  Not to be outdone, someone else invented portable computers that you could carry around with you. Think of that, a computer you could carry with you.

And then computers became big business, and a battle ranged between IBM (remember IBM?) and a place called “Apple”.  At first, IBM produced its computers aimed at business folks, with typing systems, called "Word Perfect”, and a host of other systems aimed at the business folks—math systems, called “spreadsheets”, and systems to build data bases developed.  And then Apple, not to be outdone, began developing their systems with cute games and pictures built in, so as to capture the Kid Vote.  Remember that first graphics system called “Lisa” (not to be confused with the Mona Lisa).

And then, finally, the worlds merged and telephones became computers, where you could still speak with someone, but you could also join that World Wide Web and communicate with the outer world.  

And then communications changed radically. First, most folks stopped writing things called letters. Oh we still had mail hand delivered, but it was now only rarely a communications between two humans. No, slowly, almost all “letters” became commercial transaction entities. Either a company sent you a bill for their services, or a company sent you a request that you join their services, and almost all “mail” became financially oriented—people trying to sell you something, or bill you.  Tell me, please, when was the last time you received an actual personal message from someone you know via the “Mail”?

But then you still had your “E-Mail” right? Well, no, not really. Soon, too soon for some of us, E-Mail transitioned much like the actual mail system. And instead of people sending messages to one another like in those olden tymes,  companies took over.  Now it was not all bad. At one time, I used to get “E-Mails” from news entities, like the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian, The BBC, the (Australian)BC, the (Canadian)BC, something called the Thai-Indian News. And that was nice, cuz I could check in and read the news from all over.  Slowly but surely, most of these commercial news outlets have begun asking for money, so they could continue sending me their news.

And then, the companies wishing I would buy something from them, or somehow become a member began taking over.

Now, not only do I receive almost no actual “Mail”, I get almost no person-to-person “E-Mail”. Nope, it’s all about the money now.  The days of mail as direct communications seem nearly over.  And you might say, well you still have those telephone things right? Well, yeah, but increasingly folks, especially young folks don’t communicate by phone any longer either. They send “Text-Messages”, or they join “Social Media” things called Facebook, or WhatsApp, or Twitter, or TikTok, or any of a dozen others, and they communicate via those systems.  And we only rarely communicate directly any longer.  Now, communications systems are really all about the money, and that may be what has driven younger folks to abandon them and use these other esoteric systems. And that makes me sad, as I daily go through my direct mail, and toss most of it into the trash, because it is no longer from real people. How sad.

The big question is where do we go next, because commerce will surely engulf all of these social media sites, and they too will become useless as communication devices.  Maybe next is some new form of mental brain transmission systems, after Bill Gates finishes placing electronic chips in all of our brains? 

Won’t that be fun?