Call me, beep me, if you wanna reach me

During winter break, I finally embraced the technological ways of the future. While I’m not entirely sure whether this was because it was my last winter break or because I relented and realized that planners are not coming back in style after all, what I am sure of is this: The one futuristic feature that stuck out to me, as I downloaded and synced and restarted and repeated, was how many ways there are to talk to people without actually talking to people at all.

There’s an instant messaging function on Words With Friends for passive aggressively suggesting to your playing partner that he stop using “qi” on a triple word tile. There’s the ever powerful “@” symbol on Twitter for sending a pithy rejoinder. There’s email on LinkedIn. I’m not sure how Skype, Google’s video chat, and Apple’s FaceTime differ, but you now have the capability of choosing which product you would like to use to see your loved ones’ pixelated faces.

Imagine, I thought to myself—while asking my friend whether or not her illness was subsiding as I played “qi” on a double letter tile—how this will help us stay in touch after we graduate, after we naturally and rightly grow apart, after it stops being so easy to see one another. And, in some sense, it will. Simply acknowledging that you “like” something on someone’s Facebook page is a reminder of your continued presence in that someone’s life. A tweet can sustain collegiate rapport. How can we possibly fall out of touch when staying in touch seems so simple?

It is, of course, not so simple. Because it is also possible, and maybe even probable, that we will indeed use Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ (well, maybe not Google+). That we will rely on them. And that we will come to view them as acceptable forms of communication. As substitutes for letters and phone calls and chats over coffee. That, by constantly being in communication with one another, we will not actually be communicating. The whole thing is highly reminiscent of the fourth installment of “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” series, in which the girls stop actually making time for one another because they have a magical pair of pants to mail around the country. (After writing that, it appears this comparison is not quite as apt as I originally thought.)

I have not, to be honest, decided whether all of the aforementioned is a blessing or a curse. I do not know if I, or any of us, will ever be able to know. I know that there are friends, acquaintances, and mortal enemies who graduated last year to whom I would not speak anymore if it weren’t for Twitter and Gchat. I know that, for all of my protestations, I take advantage of the convenience that today’s technology offers. I know that texting and Tweeting and posting and reblogging are easy and fun. I know that this way, at least, we will be saying something to each other.

But I also know that saying something is often not good enough for relationships forged at one point in a person’s life to matter thereafter. I know that staying in touch and continuing to touch one another’s lives are not necessarily synonymous. And I know—with certainty that the smartest of smart phones could not afford me—that there is no instant message of any kind that could ever communicate what the smile on my suitemates’ faces did when I saw them for the first time after winter break.

Emily Tamkin is a Columbia College senior majoring in Russian literature and culture. She is the general manager of the Columbia Political Union, vice chair of the Senior Fund, literary criticism editor of The Birch, and a former Spectator editorial page editor. Back to the Future runs alternate Wednesdays