Things Change, There are always changes!

Petach

Hall of Famer
Location
UK, Essex
Name
Peter Tachauer
Can't remember who penned this line in a song "Things change, there are always changes" But change seems to be happening at a far faster rate.

The UK's oldest Post Card maker (founded in the late 1800's) is to close in December. The owners cite (rather than blame) social media as the cause.

People take shorter holidays, use insta'this-that-and the other to share photographs or video immediately with family and friends. The thought of arriving home from your holiday before your postcard lands on the doorstep of the recipient is now laughable......and who uses a pen these days? I can't even remember how to hold one! I take my shots and they appear on Flickr or Facethingy.

It is sad, but it is unstoppable. The printing press started the revolution......albeit at a slow burn. Now, exponentially.... things move at a pace you can hardly keep up with.

He who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing (Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 1833)

The Internet, the sharing of news (real or fake).......is it the cause or part of the cause of the current populist uprising? Considering the power wielded by Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc Is it democratic?

The demise of the post card maker is a small part of the story......a tiny dot of things to come. Where will we be in 2, 10, 20 or 50 years time? Taking photographs with our eye and editing them with our brain and transmitting them by thought waves via a chip embedded under the scalp?
 
The thought of arriving home from your holiday before your postcard lands on the doorstep of the recipient is now laughable....

No its not. I have a friend who sends postcards whereever she goes (yes she does email but she likes to send cards) and I dont think any have arrived here before she got home again, for years. The last one, from Sweden, arrived a week after her return.

We live in a world that is on a downhill run. My postcard sending friend is on her way to Japan at the moment, makes me afraid for her and her other half in the current climate of international madness.
 
I sometimes challenge people to write letters or cards in stead of emails. The results are great (I haven’t met a single one who didn’t find it a better experience) but it’s a drop in the ocean of transience.
 
I have a (thankfully) ex-wife who would spend half of every holiday fretting over which postcards to buy. I would be dragged into every place that sold them until she had a big stock.

The next half of the holiday would be spent glued to a sun-lounger writing said postcards, agonising over what to say (I suggested a rubber stamp saying "Glad you're not here!" but it was veto'd)

The third half would be spent trying to find stamps to post the things.

Yes, I know that's three halves -150% - but I wanted to graphically illustrate the mind-numbing tedium of being a non-postcard writer trapped on holiday with a postcard-writing machine...
 
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