In a recent conversation with my Uncle via e-mail, who lives more than 1000 miles away from me, I brought up an incident involving video chat over the internet. My wife and I had recently chatted with our 9 month old nephew, Oliver, via video chat. He smiled, laughed, crawled (his new trick), and even managed to spit out a garbled “Mommmm” right before our very eyes… or, well, computer screens. My Uncle suggested “Maybe you could build a blog post around keeping in touch with the new media and grandparents who are old media.” And so it began.
This week has been an interesting week in terms of “new” and “old” media. My mother-in-law recently signed up for her first Facebook page. It used to be set up so that only college and/or high school kids could join but now anyone can. This has been a long time coming as my wife and I store all of our photo albums on the social networking service. For years (yes, years) my mother-in-law has been peering over the shoulders of her other children for a peek into our daily lives. I’ll admit that I use the service far less than my wife. She, however, updates regularly about haircuts she doesn’t like and frequently includes pictures of new paintings, school happenings, haircut mishaps, and our ongoing painting of our duplex. My mother-in-law can now quickly and easily (and without the help of her children) send a quick message, view a photo, comment on a haircut, and interact on a day to day basis with us despite the fact that she is long ways away.
This week also saw my wife receive some “old” media: a handwritten birthday letter from her grandmother. A very special physical form of communication which goes in my wife’s letterbox. It is there she stores all things handwritten and special. This includes letters from our courtship. My wife, inspired by this old form of communication, set out to write, by hand, a letter thanking her grandmother for the kind words and the card. In it, she recommended that her grandmother get a Facebook account in order to see pictures of her rapidly expanding belly producing a great-grandchild. My wife, however, was not sure that her grandmother would see the pictures through a digital medium so we set out to print pictures in the physical world in order to include them in the mail for grandma.
I’d forgotten how painful, time-consuming, and costly printing pictures really is. We had to drive somewhere, use a USB key to select the photos at a kiosk-type thing, wait an hour, pick them up, and pay for them! Yikes. I’ve heard that my grandmother-in-law is getting a Facebook account as I write this, and that the physical pictures my wife sent are already in frames at her house. (Special Update: My Grandmother-in-law now does have a Facebook account).
The question becomes one of interaction between family members separated by a great distance. When my nephew Oliver was born we met him via Skype though video chat with Mom & Dad still at the hospital. We most recently witnessed him crawl over the internet. He (almost exclusively) knows us over the internet.
The inverse is also true, and also more frightening: My son will know his Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents primarily through video chat. (I think I need to take a moment to let this sink in).
While technology is no doubt a fantastic tool for communication there are certainly downsides. On the other hand there are also fantastic benefits. If you are living far away from family members what ways do you find to stay in contact? Phone calls? Social media? Video chat? Leave tips and tricks in the comments. Is it “old” or “new” forms of communication that will win the day? One thing is for sure: my wife doesn’t keep computer printouts in her special letter box. Only “old” media goes in there.