I remember when I was a young child, everyday after school as we pulled into our apartment complex we would make a stop at this isolated little room, the mail room. To me as a child this room always seemed so peculiar! All of those little metal boxes on the walls! Oh and the special little key you needed to get into your "needle in a hay stack" box! And when we checked the mail, EVERYDAY there would be tons of stuff in there! Ads galour, bills, letters, calendars, samples and more!
Now a days, checking the mail for my children isn't quite as exciting. Some days our household receives NOTHING in the mail! Can you believe that!? With very few subscriptions and most of our accounts handled online now, at least half of what was delivered by mail is either available online or done by email.
Ten years ago, the pace at which business, marketing and personal communications moved at was much slower. Postal mail did and still does require a somewhat long process by which mail is picked up by a postal worker, sorted and distributed at a postal office, transported and delivered to another postal office and then again sorted and distributed at that postal office, all to be delivered to the recipient labeled on the envelope. It's all very physical and on going. By now of course, this process is perfected and aided with machines, technology and more efficient transportation to make it faster and more reliable. But still, it can be quite slow and costly by some means.
On the other hand, for my generation and generations to come, email has come along and changed communication protocols for us, all over the world. We deal with spam, instead of constant paper ads, and instead of making a stop at that peculiar little mail room everyday, we check our emails dozens of times a day and might check our physical mail every few days. As for the pace of communication, business, marketing, etc., it has sped up at an extremely fast exponential rate! Everyday, families share pictures and videos almost instantly with the click of a button and business matters are solved with in minutes or hours.
So which is better? Or, is one better? I'm sure we all pose different opinions, depending on our styles of living, but from my perspective, while they are both built somewhat around the same core ideas, they are executed with different mediums that result in distinct differences in speed and cost. To be frank, mailing something out via the postal service costs money for stamps and the price can get to be pretty big if you send larger packages, while email on the other hand is FREE! Regular mail also takes so much longer than email! While an email is sent with the ease of clicking a button, regular mail is known to take a day or two at least, often times longer! These days, the rest of the world is running circles around you if you're using the postal service! Another leg up on the postal service that email has is that it is "green" friendly! It's paperless! And with growing environmental concerns, saving on resources is a huge interest for many concerned citizens. So, clearly I tend to lean more towards email. It's efficient, fast, easy and free! But, the postal service is still around so there is good to be found in it too. The postal service continues to be comforting to the old soles around and those with the appreciation for having a "paper trail" as well as those who still get excited by a real hand written letter in the mail.... or a post card! You can't do post cards by email! Not with the same effect anyway.
For me, I wouldn't want to go with out our old school, traditional postal service, but mostly for the sake of ease and zero cost, I'm on the email band wagon all the way!!
Now a days, checking the mail for my children isn't quite as exciting. Some days our household receives NOTHING in the mail! Can you believe that!? With very few subscriptions and most of our accounts handled online now, at least half of what was delivered by mail is either available online or done by email.
Ten years ago, the pace at which business, marketing and personal communications moved at was much slower. Postal mail did and still does require a somewhat long process by which mail is picked up by a postal worker, sorted and distributed at a postal office, transported and delivered to another postal office and then again sorted and distributed at that postal office, all to be delivered to the recipient labeled on the envelope. It's all very physical and on going. By now of course, this process is perfected and aided with machines, technology and more efficient transportation to make it faster and more reliable. But still, it can be quite slow and costly by some means.
On the other hand, for my generation and generations to come, email has come along and changed communication protocols for us, all over the world. We deal with spam, instead of constant paper ads, and instead of making a stop at that peculiar little mail room everyday, we check our emails dozens of times a day and might check our physical mail every few days. As for the pace of communication, business, marketing, etc., it has sped up at an extremely fast exponential rate! Everyday, families share pictures and videos almost instantly with the click of a button and business matters are solved with in minutes or hours.
So which is better? Or, is one better? I'm sure we all pose different opinions, depending on our styles of living, but from my perspective, while they are both built somewhat around the same core ideas, they are executed with different mediums that result in distinct differences in speed and cost. To be frank, mailing something out via the postal service costs money for stamps and the price can get to be pretty big if you send larger packages, while email on the other hand is FREE! Regular mail also takes so much longer than email! While an email is sent with the ease of clicking a button, regular mail is known to take a day or two at least, often times longer! These days, the rest of the world is running circles around you if you're using the postal service! Another leg up on the postal service that email has is that it is "green" friendly! It's paperless! And with growing environmental concerns, saving on resources is a huge interest for many concerned citizens. So, clearly I tend to lean more towards email. It's efficient, fast, easy and free! But, the postal service is still around so there is good to be found in it too. The postal service continues to be comforting to the old soles around and those with the appreciation for having a "paper trail" as well as those who still get excited by a real hand written letter in the mail.... or a post card! You can't do post cards by email! Not with the same effect anyway.
For me, I wouldn't want to go with out our old school, traditional postal service, but mostly for the sake of ease and zero cost, I'm on the email band wagon all the way!!
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