Flashback 2000: What hath tech wrought? Dog photos

Office dogs at PCB Linear in Roscoe, Illinois

     I noticed this 2000 column while looking for something else, and had to share it, just because it reflects what all this communication felt like when it was fresh, almost a quarter century ago. Notice: a) the beginning is referring to actual mail, through the postal service, now so insignificant that since the Sun-Times moved to Navy Pier, they don't bother forwarding it and I never thought to ask; b) at the time I used a Dell computer, because their customer service was so good; c) since I was a decade away from owning a dog myself, I undervalued their importance.

     People occasionally send me pictures of their dogs. They read the column, they feel close, they write a letter and tuck in a photo of themselves or, sometimes, themselves and their dogs. Or just of their dogs.
     While I always appreciate this as a sincere gesture of affection, I nevertheless find myself throwing the pictures away. I am not — and this might sound cold — deeply interested in what their dogs look like.
     This is the sort of sentiment that would never struggle its way onto a printed page, were it not for the arrival of the new Dell computer catalog at my house yesterday. It shows off an expensive computer/video camera package and, in the bold color photography promoting it, illustrates a happy family documenting their dog holding a Frisbee in its mouth.
     The dog's image, fixed electronically, will supposedly be posted on Web sites and e-mailed to gigantic phone book lists of friends and associates. None of whom, it's a safe bet, are even remotely interested in seeing the dog.
     That sums up my view of our present moment in technology. Our capacity is expanding wildly. We can reach anybody anywhere at any time with anything — voice, text, pictures.
     But those messages are, inevitably, pictures of a dog holding a Frisbee or the equivalent: lists of jokes, chain letters, bawdy poems.
     We sit on the train, flip open our tiny cell phones, and say, loudly, "I'm on the train now. The train. I'll be home soon. If you look up and see somebody coming through the door in about 40 minutes, that person will be me. Right — the train. Yup. The same one I take every day. Yup yup. Bye."
     Nobody ever says, "The serum is arriving on the midnight plane! Have the dog team ready to rush it up to Point Barrow!"
     You have to ask who is the beneficiary of this communication. Traditionally, the recipient is supposed to be the one who receives an advantage. They learn a fact, or are entertained, or something.
     But I'm beginning to think that communication, due to all this technology, has taken on a new meaning, and now the sender is the one who gets the most out of it.
     Nearly every day, sometimes several times a day, a reader in Yekaterinburg, Russia, e-mails me with a long report documenting daily life in the Urals. I read it, usually, or at least skim it, in that hidebound belief that a person should read his mail.
     But to be honest — and I mean no offense, since I know you're reading, Rex — there are days when my heart doesn't exactly soar to see that the new report from Yekaterinburg is here.
     I don't want to make too big a deal over this change in communication because I also sincerely believe it will pass. When the Sony Walkman came out, people also went nuts with the possibility of music anywhere. For a while you couldn't ride the subway without half the passengers bobbing away to their private music halls, and it was sad to think that society would become unglued as we all retreated into our cocoons.
     Didn't happen. People got tired of them. You still see Walkmen, of course, but the tide has ebbed.
     Not that this present craze will pass soon. Just this morning, walking across the Loop from Union Station, I saw, for the very first time, a man strolling down the street, thumbing the little number pad of one of those digital e-mail pals.
     I stopped and watched him pass. He was young, 22, 24, with the longish sideburns young men are wearing now. He had on a flannel shirt and sneakers and that sort of rice planter's bag slung low across his hip.
     While I have no idea what he was communicating, my guess is something along the line of "Walking down Madison Street now. On way to Walgreens to pick up photos of my dog."
         — Originally published in the Sun-Times, September 28, 2000