I know my children will never believe it – not my children with his and her cell phones, land line phones, Internet connections with two or three e-mails accounts apiece, big screen televisions and DVD players.
They will not believe it but when their father and I married, we did not have a phone or a television. We depended on the newspaper and radio for updates on the state and national news and letters in the mail box for family news .
My mother and I both wrote to each other every week. I looked forward to those missives during our time without a phone.
Before my first child came, we added a phone and my mother and I checked the clock dutifully making sure we only called during the less expensive weekend and nighttime hours – it cost way too much to make a day time call except in the most extreme of circumstances.
Because hundreds of miles always separated her from half of her grown children, my mother wrote a letter every week listing something new about each child and grandchild based on her weekly calls. Her phone calls and letters evolved as an integral part of my week.
About the time that cancer intervened and permanently ended our phone calls, my sons left for college where they discovered the emerging world of the Internet and e-mail. They urged us to get our own e-mail account. Hesitantly, I began converting from long newsy letters to short pithy e-mails and eventually to newsier weblogs.
A couple years ago, after much discussion, one of the children presented us with a cell phone and told us to carry it whenever we traveled!
At this point we have not moved to the next level of technical expertise for maintaining family contacts: a webcam attached to the computer, but for many families with soldiers in Iraq this invention has become an integral part of their lives. For the first time in history, families can actually see if their beloved soldier is really as okay as they portray themselves in letters. Many even hold daily, virtual conversations and see what each other looks like, including holding shared virtual Christmases with their families.
It is a great tool for keeping in touch, but the webcam requires a level of technical know-how that many, especially those in the elderly, aging population, do not possess.
With them in mind, the Accenture company of Chicago, Ill. is developing a system called “The Virtual Family Dinner,” according to a Associated Press story.
The concept is simple. An elderly woman prepares to sit down and eat. The system detects it and alerts her son in another state. The son goes to his kitchen, where a small camera, microphone, speakers and a TV-sized screen allow him to sit down to supper with his mother, who has a similar setup.
When the system is ready in a couple years, many will consider it well worth the cost of $500 to $1,000 per household just to have visual contact with their loved ones.
Regardless of the cost, ultimately the makers say, “We are trying to really bring back the kind of family interactions we used to take for granted,” said Dadong Wan, a senior researcher in Accenture Ltd.’s Chicago labs.
A notion that my mother – with her pen, paper and phone calls – would have whole-heartedly embraced.