ONE hardly lamented casualty of our travel protocol in these digital times is the disappearance of the postcard. This analog approach of recording travel experiences by buying still photos of some landmarks from the hotel lobby, putting a short message on the back, and then sending it on with a stamp, seems almost quaint now. When was the last time you got a postcard from family and friends — This is the famous Parthenon which we climbed to see.
Foreign trips, when over 10% of the population now live and work abroad with their families back here visiting them occasionally, have become almost too ordinary to still merit any special correspondence. This is augmented by post-pandemic revenge spending by going into travel binges. Visa application sites have been known to crash.
Nowadays, a hand phone can take selfies with the subject posing in front of some landmark to document a trip. (We tried 20 wines in this California vineyard.) These digital images are quickly uploaded on social media as a blast and sent to multiple recipients. If Wi-Fi is available and free, the digital post with its hurried greeting is sent out with one push of a button, even as the recorded event is taking place.
And yet this e-greeting is too easily and conveniently sent to groups without even the cost of a stamp. Can this “I-can’t-believe-I’m-here” emotion of awe so earnestly expressed be shared with those only marginally connected to the sender? Can a photo of the Eiffel Tower in the background with the tag “you should see how tall it is” not be construed as just an old-fashioned case of bragging?
The old postcards can present artful photographs of the Rice Terraces in Banaue, Chartres Cathedral at dawn, or the Sydney Opera House against a blue sky without the distraction of the sender’s image. Such artful renditions are trumped by even amateurish selfie shots of the subjects in front of the hazy attraction — is that the Prado Museum behind you?
Postcards have their limitations apart from the bother of finding and sending them. The space in the back of the scenic photo of Bratislava’s rehabilitated square after stamps and address cannot accommodate the recipe for Croque Monsieur that was served at a nearby cafe. It just allows a quick hello and a throwaway line — it’s great to listen to the Vienna Boys’ Choir inside this baroque church. The message can often be summarized in four words. (I’m here. You’re not.) Still, this throwback allows another worthwhile hobby to thrive. This postcard greeting is sure to delight the stamp collector in us.
A postcard requires no response. No one writes back to a card sender in his temporary location with a gushing letter of appreciation saying how moved she was by the description of the procession at Lourdes. The postcard is hurriedly written with the understanding that the writer will be leaving right after mailing her greeting.
What the digital culture offers, which the analog postcard cannot replicate, is interaction in real time. The internet connection serves as a newsroom among groups as well. Notices of not just joyous occasions, like promotions or possible awards (Dean just got nominated for a Nobel Prize for Physics) but their opposite of hospitalizations and deaths, quickly spread with lightning speed. These are sometimes accompanied by bank deposit numbers for online donations.
While the sentimental person can go through shoeboxes of old photos printed on paper or browse through postcards in the attic, the digital browser is likely to have switched to a newer gadget leaving the old photographic baggage behind.
The ephemeral nature of digital records does not help future historians who troll through letters and postcards of the past, establishing both the emotion of the subject and his relationship to the recipient of a correspondence (your light shines on my dismal existence). Digital exchanges, no matter how fervent, can get dumped into a black hole of “deleted for everyone.”
When you refer to a “post” nowadays, it has nothing to do with the postal service or the search for collectible stamps. It’s just a notice sent to the net for all to read, react to, or ignore — he’s traveling with his grandchildren again — Kobe beef is to die for.
There’s no need to keep all the posts. Many can be forgotten… as soon as they pop up.
Tony Samson is chairman and CEO of TOUCH xda