The history of technology is about technologies being born and growing, but it is also about technologies dying or diminishing. When I went to college one of the highlights of the day was to check one's mailbox to see if there was a letter from home or from a friend. Does anyone still write letters anymore? I had an elderly friend that I lost contact with because she didn't use email, and I don't really write letters. Sometimes technologies enter a death spiral, where as they are less used, they degrade in quality. We can think of that with the Post Office no longer promising next day delivery. Here is a brief piece thinking about the history of the mail and of letter writing and its loss. (Imagine having two mail deliveries a day!) But when we want to know about our past, will we be able to access emails or texts in the same way we can access old letters of our relatives? Letters have been one of the staples of history; what will happen when they are gone? India has a tradition of letter writers, who set up shop outside post offices, offering their services to write letters for illiterate people. Some still work, but many are gone now, as even very poor people are able to afford cell phones and call home on their own. Three years ago, I did run across some letter writers in front of a post office in Ahmedabad, and their picture is above.
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