Message in a bottle

I hate text messaging. I hate Instant Messenger. I hate telephones (especially mobile ones). I hate the fact that kids are growing up thinking that they can make 'friends' through websites like MySpace and Facebook, spending their lives glued to a computer screen seeking comfort in a 'comment' from some boy in Arkansas who's nothing but a few lines of carefully constructed text and an image in a 100x100 square. Technology is killing communication. What's more divisive and lonely than the image of an awkward fourteen year old girl, socially inept and feeling isolated, cutting herself off even further from reality and spending all of her evenings typing away frantically to someone hundred of miles away? Yeah, my best friend lives in Plymouth. I met her on Livejournal. How is she ever going to break out of that rut and gain some confidence if she shields herself away from life and all of its possibilities?

I used to really judge people like this. There were girls in my year who had 'online boyfriends' and people who spent all of their time on MSN chatting to people they'd never met save for a few private messages on faceparty.com (as was the social networking site of choice back in the day!) But, hey, a lot of people aren't as lucky as me, and now I understand that these technological 'relationships' are borne out of nought but loneliness and desperation. It's an outlet for those who feel misunderstood and isolated to connect with others who 'totally get them' (pardon the cliches, but it's usually the Emo-type kids!) My problem is, though, friendships, relationships, whatever... they need to be tangible, they need to have substance. We're creating a world where a lack of companionship can be polyfillaed in by websites like this. But to me, it's kind of like putting a rug over a stain, rather than scrubbing it out. The loneliness won't go away and quick fixes never work; it'll only make you lonelier.

Now as I wander back form this tangent, I come back to the original subject of this blog: communication. Apart from their divisive qualities (and before you all get on at me as a hypocrite, I do recognise the positives of social networking websites too - they're a handy way of keeping in contact with people...), social networking sites bore me. In the context of communication, what are they? Jut a glorified instant messenger. The hardly have the substance or the romance of a letter, do they? (Not that anyone ever sits down and writes letters any more.) The Internet facilitates doing things more quickly and efficiently; email is faster than 'snail mail', hence we feel like we need to do these things faster. We're fed these ridiculous lines about how busy people are more important and we buy into some sort of accelerated culture to make ourselves seem more cosmopolitan.

Why?

The other evening we drove to Bamburgh and sat on the beach as the sun went down. In the fading light, against a golden sky, illuminated with pink, scarlet and flashes of aqua we wrote a message in a bottle and threw it out to sea as the tide came in. Against the backdrop of one of the most amazing sunsets I've ever seen and under the watchful eye of the castle, the stubborn tide kept forcing our message back, again and again. We edged further out to sea, our clothes getting soaked and our legs becoming progressively more numb, hurling the bottle out again and again only for the obnoxious ocean to scupper our efforts. You're no King Canute. Eventually, when neither of us could feel any of our extremities (paddling in the North Sea in September is never the warmest of experiences...) we gave the bottle one last almighty hurl and hoped for the best. It washed back up onto the shore, but the tide was coming in.... I hope that it relented in its objections to our message and carried it back out when it turned.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all of this technology. I feel like it's killing everything we know; books, history, friendship, communication - it's all evolving and changing... and not necessarily for the better. Sometimes I feel like it's blocking all our attempts to preserve older ways of doing things. Don't want a book shelf full of books? Try an iLiad Reader! Don't want to talk to people? Send a text message! Don't want to meet your future husband face to face? Try match.com (it's a romantic story for the grand-kids!) Designer babies, cars on finance, credit, debit, express lanes in supermarkets. Check in online if you're only carrying handbaggage. Am I the only one who realises there's more to life than speed and efficiency? Maybe that's why I'm investing so much faith that the tide changed its mind and played postman to our letter - I guess I need someone else to realise that there's more to life than this whole who has the time? mindset. Soemtiming as old and wise as the ocean must surely understand why we - humanity - need more messages in bottles and less 'new notifications'.

Please?

So, where is that bottle now? It could be in Scandinavia or washed up on an oil rig in the North Sea. It might be en route to Europe or have worked its way up 'round Scotland and be halfway to Canada in the middle of the Atlantic. Maybe it never washed back out and a dog picked it up, having mistaken it for a stick, and carried it home with real pride; a souvenir of his walk on the beach. Maybe its still there, waiting for someone like us to come alond and pick it up right where we left it. That doesn't make it any less magic. All I know is that one day someone, somewhere - whether it's a walker five minutes down the coast at Bamburgh or someone sunbathing on Bondi Beach - will find that bottle, pick it up, and read what we wrote to them. I hope it makes them smile, and I hope they appreciate it. I hope they understand.

Forget text messages, instant messenger and social networking....
THAT'S real communication.