Misanthrope's Corner.(the complications of making the transition from P.O. box to e-mail address)(Brief Article)

From time to time over the past few years, I have heard from people who wrote to congratulate me for providing a mailing address instead of an e-mail address at the bottom of this page.

Their letters invariably gave off a tone composed of equal parts of "we happy few," "us against the world," and "hold the fort," and slipped easily into a cantankerous grumble that instantly identified them as the work of a type familiar to anyone who writes for a conservative audience: Luddites, who hate anything and everything new simply because it's new.

Judging by my latest trip to the post office the other day, a new mood has taken hold. This time I got three letters in a single batch of mail, each thanking me for the mailing address in almost plangent terms, without a trace of Luddite grumbling. In fact, all three letters fairly throbbed with weary gratitude.

One correspondent got carried away, taking my P.O. Box as evidence of an exalted level of virtue on my part, saying, "I'll bet you don't even have e-mail." It reminded me of an incident in my teens when a man silenced the audible cussing of his buddies for my benefit, explaining, "I can tell you're not that kind of girl."

Actually I was, I just didn't look it. By the same token, I do have e- mail, but I save it for marriage-i.e., National Review. It's how I get this column into their computer, bicker with my editor over commas, and nag him for a galley.

The three mailing-address letters stuck in my mind and got me to wondering why my P.O. Box came to be transformed into an Edenic niche. As any writer will confirm, getting three letters on the same subject on the same day means you have struck a nerve worth writing about. I told myself there had to be a column in it somewhere and, lo and behold, here it is.

High-tech living has thrust us all into an inescapable state of terror and revulsion that is wearing us out. The ease of computers and the instantaneous reach of fax machines are all well and good, but they are so sensitive and complex that each time we turn them on we brace ourselves, heads cocked like paranoid maniacs, listening for the various hums and buzzes and ding-a-lings to judge whether they sound the way they usually do. If they don't, we go into instant nervous prostration and give vent to the cri de coeur of the helpless, cringing souls we have become: "It's doing something different!"