In-box, part 2

This is the second of three parts.

Many of you are too young to remember the days when we only had one real in-box—the mailbox outside our front doors.

We had a few other in-boxes too in the form of newspapers, magazines, radio, quaint institutions known as libraries and as many as three television channels. But all of those forms of communication ran one way.

Oh, I almost forgot. We also had telephones, which sometimes provided two-way communication. Not long ago, phones were so valuable that they were wired to the walls to prevent you from carrying them with you. Today you can buy a disposable cell phone in any drugstore. In my youth someone had to be at home to answer the telephone in order for a message to be passed on to an absent family member. Any long distance call was, by definition, an important event. I still remember when we had a party line, when the first push button phone replaced the last rotary dial phone at our house and those days before answering machines. In those days only rich people with teenagers in the house had more than one phone number in the family.

Don’t worry, Discerning Reader, this isn’t going to turn into a nostalgic piece about the golden days of yore. I prefer today’s multitude of in-boxes and out-boxes to the good old days.

All of the old one-way means of communication still exist, but today our in-boxes come in so many different forms. Cell phones, e-mail, voice mail, text messages, podcasts, social networking websites, interactive television and blogs like this are now part of the way most of us interact with the world. Our communications aren't limited to one or two directions these days--they can be networked and broadcast to anyone who cares to receive them, like this blog.

I like that most of our new in-boxes also come equipped with out-boxes so we can talk back. The comments section of this blog is the perfect example. When I say something wrong or ridiculous here, you have the option of calling me on it.

I like being able to send a message to friends around the world, instantly and for free. I like the security and convenience of having a telephone in my pocket wherever I roam. I prefer having hundreds of entertainment options piping through my television. Last year I signed up with Facebook, and I’m finding pleasure in tracking the lives of my friends and family through that medium, although Facebook has made me come to appreciate the term “too much information”.

Like most people my age, I’m not so keen on texting, though. The younger people in my life are completely addicted to this form of communication. I think that’s a generational thing.

All of the in-boxes we now have available to us come with a price. They make our real lives more difficult to manage.

It’s so easy for me to lose an entire evening to an Anthony Bourdain marathon on the Travel Channel. I can get so busy living out my virtual life on Facebook that I sometimes forget to live a real one. So much information coming at me from so many divergent sources takes time and energy to access, filter and prioritize.

I’m trying to cut back on my in-boxes, but I do backslide. For me, the television is the worst culprit. When I’m tired, it’s way too easy for me to flop in my easy chair at 7 p.m. and passively watch whatever is moving around on the screen. The next thing I know, it’s 2 a.m. and I wake up in my easy chair stiff and cold with an infomercial playing in the background.

I bet I’m not alone. Am I?

The time we previously devoted to mastering an art or craft or socializing with other people, we now give to the gods of cable and the internet, and I suspect that's a very bad thing. How many great works of art and literature have been lost to hours spent watching television? We'll never know.

I know today’s post doesn’t represent original thinking. This is a well-plowed field and you’ve thought of these things yourself. But, here's the deal--I need to keep reminding myself that every hour is precious, and I’m not getting any of them back. Our communication may be networked, but the limited hours of our life still flow in only one way.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to shut down my technology. I still prefer today’s golden age of communication and all of the options it gives me to interact with the world. I just need to keep in mind that it’s always better to live in the real world than in a virtual one.