Par Avion: Do You Remember?

Image by McFortner via Flickr

Do you ever stop and think how amazing it is that we can communicate across the globe like this?  I'm 51 so I remember when a letter to Europe took weeks and  it was extra for Airmail, or Par Avion like the envelopes said in that particular blue.

And, why did they only say it in French and English if the envelope came from North America? Did we only send mail to France?  Did we buy all our envelopes in Quebec? Did we think French was the only other language spoken or that everyone else but the French would just see the little plane? 

I was a language major in high school, had relatives in Europe, and spent the summer I was 14 in Spain  so I had cause to make a rare call and send and receive mail to and from Europe and once in a great while even to a friend who moved to Asia to teach. A daytime call to Europe was a ridiculous expense. But we also only made long distance calls after  five in the evening if it was important and after eleven for any other reason because the rates were lower.

As late as the mid 80s it was thought that video communication would never be commonplace. That the best we could hope for were something like faxed still shots.

In the early 1990s we had a great trip to Italy to meet my cousins there. I remember crying as we left because I thought of my maternal Grandfather who had emigrated to the US in the early 20th century. He had only returned to Italy once in 1968.  My mother went with him. Since then my family has gone back and forth many times. If it weren't for the hassle of flying and house sitter arrangements it would be a walk in the park to go back and forth. The world has changed so much. 

Lest I sound like my own grandmother, let me say that my husband is part of the technological revolution that makes this communication possible.  It isn't only what I remember, it's looking back just a century or two when it took three months to cross the Continental US and information only moved as fast as a ship or a horse.

Amazing.

Choose: Books or Clothes and Food? A Ramble on Reading and Technology

This whole idea today came up because of Amazon Prime's new lending library for Kindle. It got me thinking and there went the morning!

Erasmus (1466/9 to 1536) said:

"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes" - Erasmus

I say, thank goodness for ARCs and free Kindle books and, of course, libraries for without them I'd be hungry and naked!

Of course none of these things existed then, except of course for priests scholars like Erasmus who was quite the scholar and traveler; he probably lived in more places than most people of that time even knew existed.

Erasmus by Holbein
Image via WikipediaSo from the wondrous development of the printing press to libraries, book stores, Amazon, Kindles,  iPads and beyond look at what we have accomplished without telepathy even.

In  Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose (Simon and Schuster, 1997) I recall the point having been made that no information moved faster than a horse. While I do not recall if ships were included in that phrase they should be. In the mid-eighteenth century whalers could cross the Atlantic in as few as twenty days (or as long as four months). 

So, from the the development of language to the 1400's the only way to communicate was by either being in the same room, via signal fires or some other form of code that could be sent via visible cue from one observation point to another, or by writing/telling someone a message and having them deliver it. 

Then books were developed, first hand written then with presses, but at great expense and still that pesky transportation process made the movement of information from place to place slow. 

With the development of "the machine," such as the steam engine, those written words or messengers could move more quickly from place to place so thoughts could spread much more quickly. Then someone came up with the telegraph and the telephone, radio,TV, the Internet. 

I grew up in the sixites and seventies when a brighter future was promised through technology. We just needed to trust the government and the big corporations and everything would be better. Hah! Explodng gas tanks, meltdowns and disasters wrought by technology changed the paradigm. We no longer expect the future to be made more beautiful with technology but we still appreciate and adopt it. 

But, as late as the early 1990s I recall people saying that video phones were a pipe dream. Of course then the bandwidth necessary was still being held by the government. But now, my husband may be in Asia and we can talk and see each other instantly for the cost of having the internet. I am amazed by these advances. 

I doubt we have stopped developing forms of communicating and will continue to be able to exchange ideas more and more quickly (I hope so, that means selling more integrated circuits and that's kind of what my husband does). The scope of dissemination of the idea has also expanded hugely. At one point you knew what you were told. Few people could read or write. The powers that be often found it easier to control the masses that way. Fewer than two-hundred years ago in the United States, it was illegal to teach a slave to read. With time and our educational evolution, literacy is common (not universal but nearly). More people have ideas which they can develop and spread. 

Kind of like me, right now. Libraries came about making it possible for more and more people to develop their minds and ideas without buying books.   Leisure became more prevalent so people could take time to do that. But, I digress, as usual. My point was that for Erasmus the choice was between subsistence and reading. To him reading and knowledge was more important than eating or clothing himself. We are much more fortunate. Even without disposable income most of us can find something to read. Maybe literary critics exist because of respect for the amazing development of the written word. In any case we have come so far in a short period of time. Now communication is as close as a click. Whether an idea deserves that click is another topic for discussion.