an appropriate use of technology

Hi smart sister,

I consider the following to be inappropriate uses of the technology of communication:

• texting someone while standing at their door
• chain letters
• pig-latin
• cell phone conversations while on a train or bus
• GPS, when used to get from home to work and back again
• automated telemarketing
• having your homework faxed to you in 3rd grade because you forgot it at the other parent's house
• emails with only one sentence

That last one brings me to my real point in this post: I think your idea for a blog is a good one. Many, many times during the day I think of things I want to tell you. Writing you a letter would be a good idea, but I rarely make myself sit down and do it. Instead, I end up checking my email, remember that one funny thing I overheard or beautiful thing I saw or bizarro thought I had, realizing you are the only person who could adequately appreciate how funny/beautiful/bizarro it truly was, and then emailing it to you as though it were a note I was passing you in seventh grade. (We were never in seventh grade together, obviously, but you get the idea.)

Writing a blog post reminds me a lot of writing a note. It must concisely fit on one page but has room enough for a whole story. It can be wordy, or contain doodles, or enclose pictures or other ephemeralia of life. It can be about anything, or nothing. And since it can be intercepted by anyone, it must (as with all good notes) use code, pseudonym, and other forms of abbreviated insider knowledge. In short, I think blogs are the new hand-crafted, passed-under-the-desk, written-in-purple-ink-and-folded-into-intricate-origami-contraptions, notes.

Since we stopped living together when I was twelve and you were eight I have always wanted to share the world with you again. I've squeezed bits and pieces into emails and envelopes, bombarded you with blurry cell phone photos, collected bits of magazines and made you collages, crafted intricate stick figure cartoons at which you could roll your eyes. Every day I come up with something new you should know about. (Yesterday it was men wearing leggings as pants - more on that later.)

Today I would like to tell you this: I think this blog is a good idea, and an appropriate use of technology.

Love,
your luddite sister