Letter to the Past....

Dear Anna,

                Hello there, my name is Eric Rausch and I am from the year 2014 located in the frigid land of Duluth Minnesota. You may be wondering why I am writing to you and how I came to find the time machine as well as understanding that we can only send letters through the vacuum shoot. Jocelyn is actually my professor in class in the future, and she assigned me the duty of writing you and explaining the future! In the following letter I will be informing you of all the new forms of communications in 2014 compared to your 1873 such as a thing called “tweeting” and all about “posting”. I’m excited for this opportunity, I hope this helps paint a clearer picture of 2014 for you and gives you all the answers to your questions.

               

               Much like you stated in the letter you wrote to Jocelyn that she gave to me, when talking face-to-face even in my present (your future) we still surprisingly in fact talk about the weather quite regularly, especially in Minnesota where the weather changes every 5 minutes. It is one of the main ice breakers for our conversations. We also regularly discuss athletics the main one’s being football and soccer, I’m sure people have quite the sports following in your time as well, just maybe different sports.

                To answer your most crucial question it is going to take a few paragraphs to talk it all out with you, here we go. The way we communicate in my world (2014) can be accomplished in many, many forms or platforms. These platforms are different forms of social media communications, they have a wide array of them for all different scenarios.  These give us the ability to instantaneously communicate or share information with someone thousands and thousands of miles away if we want. (Crazy to believe I know)

                

                The first platform I’m going to explain to you is a social integration website (from the internet, whole different story) called Facebook. This is a place where you can post your thoughts for the day on your “wall”, as well as photos of yourself, family members, or any picture you feel like posting really. The site also allows you to see all of your friend’s thoughts of the day, pictures, or anything really. This site allows us as people of migration who move to places different from our home (usually) to connect with people who we may have left behind to pursue our own goals. If it is by instantly chatting on their Facebook chat platform, or just by enjoying pictures or posts of our friends that we can “like” (by hitting a button) or commenting on those posts or pictures. It was an ingenious idea that propelled social media into whole different realm then it was previously thought to reach before.

                

                Twitter is another platform of social media that has gained prominence in recent years, twitter is similar in a way to the previous platform Facebook, and however this is a more instant stream of information as well as friends thoughts of the day. Users “tweet” something but it has to be less than 140 characters, it may be less characters but this may be a little bit more challenging for some people because being able to relay your message in fewer words is a skill many people are continuously developing. Twitter to me is my main source of information about what’s going on in the world, while you can’t believe everything you read on there if you look closely you can actually find some very relevant information from reliable sources that could be a statement, photo, or link to a different website.

               

                Blogging is another popular form for communications that occurs in a non-face-to-face manner, this is done by people going to popular blogging sites and creating a blog of their choice if they so choose. This is great for people who may go on trips for a month, or study abroad and they can’t communicate with their loved ones through phone calls (Jocelyn said she explained to you telephones). The blogger will post whatever they feel like or whatever subject they want to talk about. For example, someone takes a trip to a museum with their study abroad program that they wanted to share with everyone. They would go to their “blog” and write up a summary of the things he/she did and saw, as well as any pictures they want to share they may have taken.

                

               The conclusion I have for you on my present (future to you) is that there is exponential ways for us as human beings to communicate with each other over vast distances that are not available to you.  I believe that if you were to find a way to my time, you would find yourself being less lonely because you can literally make friends from anywhere. You would have the ability to be in contact with them at any instant and be able to share with them whatever you feel like, it would literally be all up to you! My final statement is that the year 2014 is an amazing time in human history because we are the most technologically advanced we have ever been, information can be shared so quickly that we as humans are becoming more and more intelligent as we grow. I hope the best for you in the past (your present) and hope you can find a way to 2014 if that is something that you really want.

All the best to you Anna,

Eric Rausch