Journal 2

In the excerpt from The Postal Age, Henkin states, “The large claims made in this chapter for the mid-century post as a modern communications network rest on such considerations of access and use.”  I think this sentence outlines the basis of where networks, materiality, and writing are all connected. A couple of paragraphs down he also says, “Sanger’s frustrations say nothing about the slowness of the mails as such (since the letter may have arrived at its official destination in the Boston post office with great dispatch); rather, they reflect a society in which postal correspondence took place without what later generations would regard as adequate supplemental circuits of information.” Material wont be written if there isn’t an adequate network for it to be sent through. Hekin also discusses economic standing and the price of letters being inhibiting many people from writing and communicating with one another. Personal letters were a luxury item, “Under these circumstances, most Americans tended to use the mail, if at all, for shorter distances or special occasions when the high price of sending a letter would mark the significance of the gesture.” The inability of the poorer class to send and receive letters is a direct example of how networks, writing, and materiality are related. These three things influence each other in a sort of domino effect.