An Epiphany:
(Not quite off-topic since you, dear reader, are receiving this message from some random guy sitting in a desk in London.)
I had an IM chat with my daughter last night. She had asked me if she could install new IM software on the machine there so she could chat with her cousin. I responded, “No” for various support-related reasons, and told her to send an email to her cousin instead.
Her response, which was normal for someone “talking” in real-time with another person half-way across the world, was “but that’s too slow”. I laughed and told her that’s what perople had to do in the “old days”. I joked with her, telling her it someteimes would even take up to 10 minutes to receive an email from someone.
You see, she was born in 1995, a year after the Internet was available to the public. All of her life we’ve had Internet access, and things that seem magical to us are normal for her.
Someday I will sit down with the kids and tell the tale of the way mail messages were delivered before motorised vehicles existed.
Think about it: Sending a letter from central USA to central England:
If you live out-of-town, you’d ride the letter into town on your own horse or walk it in. It would sit in the local post office until the mail carrier came to town to pick up the mail. That could take a week or more, depending upon weather, location, etc.
Then the mail carrier would ride the letter into the main post office, sometimes dodging hostile natives and certainly weathering bad weather most times of the year. The letter would be routed from one post office to another as needed. This process would repeat until the letter made it to the shipyard.
The letter would then be put on a boat and travel to England. This could take months, depending on the time of year and weather. Once landing on shore, and upon leaving the shipyard, the letter would again be relayed via horse or foot to its intended recipient in England, where the person reads the latest news from his friend or family member in America.
Then they would write back a response and the process would begin anew.
This is all assuming that the letter is not lost, destroyed, stolen, etc. in transit.
Wow.
