E18: Is the telephone a curse or a blessing ?

A slightly eccentric professor of archaeology in West Africa would neither answer the telephone nor reply to letters. As for letters, he would say, leave them long enough and they answer themselves. As for the telephone, I consider it an unwarranted intrusion. If people want to talk to me they can come and see me. Of course, the world could not carry on in its modern way without the telephone, which has become an essential part of living. Yet, in some respects it can be a curse.

Today, telephonic communication is worldwide and instantaneous. It is possible to dial people at the other end of the world without even going through an operator. This is fine, providing the time-differences are remembered. More seriously, in conjunction with satellite television, world news is instantly on our screens, sometimes even as it happens. Such exposure of, usually, unhappy events, wars, accidents, acts of terrorism etc can actually have a bad influence on the course of a war, a hostage-taking, or a tribal massacre. When it took a British ship four months to deliver a letter to or from, say, India, the crisis had often been settled locally, with much less anxiety all round.

The telephone has greatly decreased the volume of mail worldwide. Some letters have to be written, of course, but the art of private letter writing has become a dying art. Writing a good letter means first collecting then sorting out one's thoughts, and the finished article can be something to be proud of, a small masterpiece. And because letters today are considered of secondary importance, mail services in many countries have greatly deteriorated.

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Source: www.englishdaily626.com