Communication failure: January 19-21, 2007

Dear Gerdie, Gammie, Grannie, Goma, Gumma, Farmor, Fam, Famo, or Mago (my favorite),

I began writing to you the day before yesterday, January 18, 2007, hoping to be able to send my letter that same day. I was thinking about how you had to wait until the 19th to receive news by telegram of the birth of your grandson on the 18th of January 1942. I wanted to use the telegram you received 65 years ago as a reference, and explain how we (expect to) communicate the same information the same day, the same hour and minute, from our homes and offices, via "internet" technology today. As it turns out, your telegram, which was delivered in 1942 during a world war, was delivered much more quickly to your home than I could from my home via today’s internet media in times of peace – not because today’s technology is slower, but because it is not so robust as the "telegram" technology of 1942.

Communication service providers are no longer public utilities, but commercial companies with a virtual monopoly on a technology which even they don't master. And service providers aren't the local handyman, but often inaccessible and cocky as they are unreliable! When they can’t deliver – even if it's for days – they simply close down their customer service lines, shrug their shoulders, shake their heads, and claim they are sorry (when they finally manage to open up again). Perhaps we all react by simply "closing down" nowadays, inundated as we are with expectations of us that we cannot fulfill. As a young friend said yesterday: "Had it been important enough for you to send that mail to your grandmother, then you would have trekked through deep snow to an "internet café" [coffee houses that have communcation equipment that might work when my private line fails] to send it."

Today, after three days of communication failure, I am once again able to communicate – but God knows for how long? Our vulnerability is different from yours. Without our “internet connections”, today’s equivalent to your “telegraph operator”, many of us cannot send or receive messages, nor can we use our telephone, or even watch TV. Some of us cannot even make a living because we are so dependent on this connection to receive and deliver assignments in the rapid pace of today’s highly competitive, global work environment.

Fortunately you were accustomed to waiting to send and receive mail. I sense that you are happy to know that I am thinking of you...65 years later. We gotta get our priorities straight.
Your devoted granddaughter

ps. Ironically, the name of the Swedish company that has been unable to deliver my mail these past three days is called Comhem, which means Come home. I wonder, where is home these days?