My First E-Mail
Kuglich, Daniel

>>DANIEL: Hi I'm Daniel Kuglich and I'm going to talk about one aspect of literacy in my life and that would be the transition between the old and new forms of literacy and some of the frustrations that come with that including the reluctance to let go of the old. So in 1990s when I was in college I had heard these rumblings of this internet and hadn't actually been on a website yet but had actually discovered something called Telnet which was a way for us to access email and I had finally put together that the "e" means electronic in mail and I could talk to my friends; if I didn't want to talk to them on the phone I could talk to them on email. So I do remember distinctly writing my first email to Jane Oakly who was, coincidentally, going to the University of Illinois when I was at Illinois State and not checking for a reply until probably long after I had actually spoken to her in person which kind of defeated the purpose of the quickness of the email I think. Eventually we began writing back and forth and had dialogue on email in between the times when I actually saw her in person. Gradually other friends got on board and I remember still feeling like I had to print and save every single email conversation I had and it wasn't for lack of space or for lack of understanding on how to actually use the disk to store it but because I think I was reluctant to let go of the former mode of communication where you would actually write a letter and actually have the physical piece of paper to look at. So I still have a folder, several very thick folders actually, of all these emails that I printed out and chat conversations once we'd learned to do that too because for nostalgia's sake I guess I still just wanted that piece of paper. Eventually I dropped that habit otherwise I'd need like a spare house to keep all of the paper in, but I feel like that happens with every emergent form of technology that there's this transition period where people are reluctant to let go, maybe not even consciously, reluctant to let go of the way they used to do things. I can make a comparison to having an IPod now and I'm at the stage now where I very rarely if at all play CD's but I can't seem to let go of them even though I have all the music digitally in my hand or in my pocket and there's just a room full of dusty CD's. So I kind of feel the same way about when I was first learning email like I wanted to still have those pieces of paper because that's the way I was comfortable communicating.