Technology Kills Romance

When Emily Dickinson corresponded with her lover, a married man, she made every letter count. Today, the art of letter writing has been reduced to the dregs of sub-standard English found in e-mail. Even grade A Harvard scribes tend to regress on the Internet, thanks to the College's most tried and true teaching method: Pavlovian conditioning.

The vast majority of Harvard first-years arrive in Cambridge ready to put their best foot forward, only to learn that it's more important to get that foot in the door by learning the new-speak on e-mail. From the moment they netconnect, students enter a downward spiral of sound bite style communication.

But where exactly does this terse, abbreviated e-mail language originate? Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is replete with TLAs (three letter acronyms) and reductive sound-bite talk and one may inevitably spot CS 50 students chuckling in the computer lab while Unix illiterates struggle with the fluorescent pink HASCS pocket dictionary. Technology is the wave of the future, they seem to say, either ride it, or get dunked.

Now, I should temper this vast Unabomber-esque techno critique with two observations. First of all, e-mail notes serve a variety of purposes. Electronic mail is an efficient way to exchange vital information quickly, and as those who have had to wait for hours to use Science Center or Loker Commons computer terminals know, brevity has its advantages. But in notes to close friends, especially friends in remote locales, one should never choose function over fashion. Second, letters are constructed with a flourish and if a particular writer favors short muscular phrases, why not go with it?

Unfortunately, style is unteachable. I was recently at the Science Center writing an e-mail of my own when I happened to glance at the screen of an acquaintance beside me and was not suprised to see that he had spent the last 15 minutes constructing a happy face out of lower case i's. The banner message, addressed to his girlfriend, Julie, read "'Tis the east, and Julie is the sun." Shakespeare no doubt turned in his grave as my counterpart sent the epistle and then glanced at me doubtfully to ask if I thought the note was too long.

The problem is simply that computer literacy in general has become more important to the world of technology, that is to say, the world of tomorrow, than literacy itself. This is evident by the sheer number of home pages that are empty or overfull but so lacking in content it appears their authors forgot the cardinal rule of basic: less is more. It seems now is the crucial time to question what traditional values are being washed away as we surf to tomorrow on the World Wide Web. Will vacuous banter on chat lines and bulletin boards take the place of witty correpsondence? Is cybersex capable of replacing Dickinson's love letters? Somehow "http://www.webromance.com/" just doesn't sound the same.