Life's changes

As long as I am reminiscing about what feels like a past life of (almost) a different person—the me of decades ago—I am struggling to remember how we ever got business done before email. I remember well being at Genesis Technologies, the loudspeaker company Arnie Nudell and I founded in 1990. In those days, my habit was to open the daily incoming mail, read each letter sent to us, place them in a stack on my desk, and spend the next few hours pecking out replies on my computer/printer. Days later, those mailings would elicit a phone call or, sometimes, another letter. There were no forums, chat rooms, or websites to visit for information. Rapid communication happened via the telephone, and snail mail happened over days and weeks. Today, all that has changed. Like all changes, there are better and worse results. On the one hand, thanks to Wikipedia and other knowledge base resources, I have the entire sum of human knowledge available to me at the click of a mouse. On the other hand, there is almost no person-to-person interaction. limited knowledge and instant communication with only dozens traded for today's unlimited knowledge and instant communication with thousands of people. I don't know if one is better than the other. Had I to choose, I would lean in towards what we have today. The fact I can communicate with so many people all over the world is, I think, a blessing. In the end, today I feel much more connected than yesterday.