More and more people prefer online shopping to actual shopping. First off, online shopping saves you time as you don’t even have to leave your room or office to complete your purchase. Another advantage of online shopping is that you … Continue reading →
More and more people prefer online shopping to actual shopping. First off, online shopping saves you time as you don’t even have to leave your room or office to complete your purchase. Another advantage of online shopping is that you … Continue reading →
The difference between typing an email and writing a letter or memo out by hand is akin to walking on concrete versus strolling on grass.
A butcher can tell you which cuts of meat are the freshest; an online grocer may not. That same butcher, if he is good, might not just remember your preferences—which an online retailer can do frighteningly well—but ask you how your mother has been doing, whether you caught the latest football game. These interactions remind us that we are more than consumers; they remind us that we are part of the world in a way no amount of online shopping ever will.
This is right on the money - a visit to a local farm shop is a wonderful experience.
If we spend our evening online trading short messages over Facebook with friends thousands of miles away rather than going to our local pub or park with a friend, we are effectively withdrawing from the people we could turn to for solace, humor and friendship, not to mention the places we could go to do this. We trade the complicated reality of friendship for its vacuum-packed idea.
It might be just the way this essay was abridged for the paper, but I cannot see whether the author wants us to spend all evening writing a longhand letter to a distant friend, or ignore them altogether to spend time with a local friend.