{"id":38831,"date":"2018-06-17T16:31:24","date_gmt":"2018-06-17T21:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=38831"},"modified":"2018-06-17T16:50:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-17T21:50:09","slug":"the-joys-of-correspondence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=38831","title":{"rendered":"The joys of correspondence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/CutlerDarwin.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/CutlerDarwin.png\" width=\"150\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>In response to the discussion of \"<a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=38809\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Realistic limitations<\/a>\" on telephone conversation, Anne Cutler sent in a link to her 1989 <em>New Scientist<\/em> article \"<a href=\"https:\/\/pdfs.semanticscholar.org\/a796\/5661a18e63655e44024576795f9cdf7a3a0e.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The new Victorians<\/a>\":<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\"My dear Hooker,\u201d wrote Charles Darwin to Joseph Hooker on 6 March 1844, \u201cI will not lose a post in guarding you against what I am afraid is &#8230; labour in vain.\" This urgent warning went by post, because Darwin had no option: he had no telephone. What the Victorians did have, however, was a pretty efficient postal service, and they made good use of it. Look at the fat volumes of Darwin's correspondence. Hooker was only one of many fellow scientists with whom Darwin exchanged letters at a rate that seems to us prodigious. Victorian scientists bombarded one another with ideas, results and opinions, and all by mail.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">By comparison, we write few such letters. But now, quietly, a new age of scientific correspondence\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #000080;\">is opening, and what has brought it about is a new kind of mail: electronic mail.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Of course, many younger people now see email as something that their parent do &#8212; and view writing and sending an actual paper letter as something as foreign to their experience as composing and performing operatic recitativo. Though even undergraduates do participate in research-oriented email exchanges these days, perhaps as a concession to elderly collaborators.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In response to the discussion of \"Realistic limitations\" on telephone conversation, Anne Cutler sent in a link to her 1989 New Scientist article \"The new Victorians\": \"My dear Hooker,\u201d wrote Charles Darwin to Joseph Hooker on 6 March 1844, \u201cI will not lose a post in guarding you against what I am afraid is &#8230; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-changing-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38831"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38837,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38831\/revisions\/38837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}