Ten years ago, information and entertainment was piped into my home via a phone line and television hooked up to an antenna. Today, like most of my neighbours, I have a landline with voicemail and call waiting options, a mobile phone, cable television that brings in 70 channels and high-speed internet access. I subscribe to one newspaper and a half dozen magazines. And, of course, there's the mail itself, brought to me five days a week by the hardworking postman.
I have an overwhelming variety of information and entertainment delivered to my house every day. Yet, even more is on offer. Almost daily, we are the victims of appeals via the phone, e-mail and from door-knocking sales agents. Since Canadian authorities effectively dismantled the monopoly that once controlled telephone services, everything is up for grabs.
We have phone companies offering cable services and cable companies offering phone services. Both are offering high-speed internet links. Internet service providers, meanwhile, are offering phone services. I can subscribe to Web or paper versions - or both - of my favourite newspapers and magazines. Even the Post Office is losing market share to courier companies and e-mail.
It's all a little bewildering. I currently pay C$5 (HK$33.40) a month for long-distance calls anywhere in North America, at any time. I obtained that rate by agreeing to sign up for local, mobile-phone and high-speed internet services with the same company. But others are tempting me with even better offers.
You would think, with this much knowledge so close to hand, that Canadians would be among the most alert and informed citizens on the planet. That guy walking past my house, reading a text message on his mobile is probably just picking up news of the latest bombing in Baghdad. As soon as he walks into his home, he can sit down at a computer and view images of the bombing, send an e-mail to the president of the United States with a comment on it, and hunt down a blog of someone who might have witnessed the explosion. Do those connections make us better citizens, or simply more anxious, confused and numb?
There are days when I wonder not just about the utility of the information we have available, but about the cost and volume of it that my family consumes. Although we have a mobile phone, I rarely carry it. I'm often happy to be beyond its beckoning ring tones. It gives me time to think, time to observe the human panorama, time to marvel at the change of seasons. And it calls to mind a line a wise old relative once passed on to me: the man who spends his days waiting for the mail needs to hear a little more from himself.
