Chapter 58 phone calls and letters

Advanced telecommunications have saved a lot of trouble in writing letters.If you have something, you have any idea, you can express it with just one phone call.The two sides talk on the phone, which is fast and direct; in the future, there will be a video phone, and it will be more like a face-to-face conversation.This is the practical value of the telephone being more and more widely used since Bell invented the telephone (Edison was one step behind in registering his invention). With the progress of the times, telephone technology has not only allowed direct long-distance calls within a country, but has also advanced to the point where you can make direct international calls while sitting at home, which has almost completely replaced the telegraph, let alone writing letters with a pen. ; Unless there is no need to care about time efficiency, or things that must be expressed in writing, they still have to be done in letters.

The telephone is indeed a great invention that has brought benefits to human life; but if you look at the function of the telephone from the perspective of history and literature, you think it is a great harm to human cultural activities. In the past, when telephone equipment was not popular enough, relatives and friends mostly used letters to communicate internationally or within a country, and even within the same big city, they often used letters to communicate, and even to grasp Time difference people take letters to go to the other party to handle affairs.As for before the invention of the telephone, it was the world of letters.These innumerable letters and paper were kept intentionally or unintentionally, and often became the first-hand precious materials for later generations to study biographies or historical events.

That's why I said that after the popularization of telephones, it caused losses to human cultural activities, and that's the problem.Because although it replaced a large number of letters, it could no longer leave any traces of ink.But this kind of evolution of human scientific civilization is helpless; we can't reverse the car, I just feel a little bit disappointed! This feeling of mine is by no means out of thin air.I read books on literature, history and biography published before the Republic of China and the beginning of the Republic of China. Every time I see a large number of original letters from parties or related parties quoted in the books, and even the manuscripts of the original letters are printed and published, which is very real and vivid.Today's people write about people and events in the early and pre-Republic of China, and they can still see many authentic letters in the books.However, in the books on literature, history and biography published since then, where people and events are involved, there are more narrations and less references to authentic letters; even they can only record what someone said to someone on the phone. That's right.

From this, I have another association. In Zeng Guofan's era, if the telephone had been extended in all directions, he could call his family at any time by raising his hand to dial the number. What about the great work "Zeng Wenzheng's Family Letter"? From the point of view of literature and history, the difference between telephone and letter is so great, how can it make people feel no emotion?It can also be seen that the progress of scientific civilization is not perfect.