Some readers may have noticed in recent weeks that a strange hieroglyphic has started to appear at the end of this column, in the place where sometimes it might say, for example, that "John Waters is unwell" (no news to right-thinking Irish Times readers).
To suggest that we must all be on email is a bit like saying that, because whiskey exists, we should all be drunk all the time. Again and again, we are reminded that we live in a "technological age", that we are all "citizens of cyberspace".
We live, in fact, in an era of technological fetish, technological obsession, technological fascism, in which we are pummelled with the notion that it is necessary to be instantaneously available to everyone at all times, and that to wish it otherwise is evidence of backwardness.
The obsession with technological communication is part of the cultural obsession with youth. It is part of the thought stream which dictates that everything young people say, do, believe or desire is self-evidently good. And because there is a belief that young people enjoy sitting in front of computer screens, turning themselves into zombies, this is something we are all obliged to engage in, on pain of obsolesence.
The computer culture with which we have such a latter-day preoccupation is a way for young people to separate themselves from the channels of their elders, but also a way for old fogeys to pretend to the world what they have already succeeded in selling to themselves: that just because they are as bald as plates doesn't mean they're not hip to the chip.
Email is not about better communication but about being thoroughly "modern".
I am told that the benefits of being "online" (you see how modern I am, in spite of everything?) include the opportunity of having more "interaction" with readers, as well as obtaining additional information and new ideas.
NO OFFENCE, but in nearly 10 years of writing this column, the number of times I got an idea from a letter written by a reader could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. As for information, my house is already half-full of paper, most of which I will never read.
What we need is not more information, but more sense, and I do not imagine that email is conducive to sense.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I suspect that, with email, anybody who is disposed to have an idle thought can simply sit at a keyboard and dash off a one or two-line rant, without placing anything of themselves on the line. Email is greenbiro heaven, and has much, I would say, to do with the brutalisation of communication to which I referred.
I am not a citizen of cyberspace. I am a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. There is no earthly reason why I should be available for people to inundate me with their opinions and abuse simply because they buy The Irish Times. I write a column, on a weekly basis, and submit it for publication. If people wish to read it, that's fine; if they like what they read, that's great.
But if not, no problem. It is not part of my job to make myself available as a punchbag for people who have got out the wrong side of the bed.
There is no more basis for providing readers with an email address for John Waters than there would be for giving them my home telephone number or issuing a general invitation to attend for tea at my house on Saturdays at four.
There are other, more serious, objections. It tends to take a long time, with any new technological or cultural development, to see that there is a price-tag attached. We're only now beginning to become aware, for example, of the potential health risk of the mobile telephone. The obsession with computers, similarly, has a vast hidden cost, not least in the creation of isolationism and alienation in a generation of youngsters strung out on the Internet, and in the numbing effect on creativity and imagination which is the inevitable consequence of such a withdrawal from the world.
ANYWAY, what's wrong with Postman Pat? For 50 years, my father drove a mailcar. For several years I did likewise. Many of those from whom I would be likely to receive emails would wish that I had remained with this occupation. I didn't, but I retain a high regard for the sacred nature of letter-writing, the ritual of the post, and the centrality of communication as meaningful human intercourse rather than technological fetish.
The process of letter-writing involves investment of time and thought, which functions, almost as though so calculated, to reduce the incidence of nuisance or abusive missives. To go to the trouble of writing a letter, it is, generally speaking, necessary to care, to think, to reflect.
This is not true of sending an email. If people wish to write to me, there is a time-honoured way of doing so. First you purchase an envelope and some writing paper, then you sit down and write me a letter. When you have committed your thoughts to paper to your satisfaction, you place the letter in the envelope, on the outside of which you write: Mr John Waters, @Mucksavage.e-eye-e-eye-oh, The Irish Times, D'Olier Street, Dublin 2. Then it is time to go to the post office. You will find the fresh air will do you good, and in no time at all that throbbing in your left temple will have abated.
In the post office, you will, in return for a small consideration, be given a stamp, which you should stick on to the top, right-hand corner of the envelope, on the same side as the address. You should then look around for a small rectangular aperture in a wall or pillar box, into which you should place your missive.
In a matter of days, I will receive your letter, and, if you are sufficiently polite and I am interested enough in what you have to say, you will receive a reply in due course.
Vote for Postman Pat.
John Waters can be contacted at jwaters@irish-times.ie