Literature review

Introduction

The ideal way of family has changed, and people who lived in the large family became in the minority in recent years. Living apart from near relatives became general. Greater numbers of people than ever before are living on their own, the amount of single people is on the rise. However, persons who live separately from their family seem want to share some part of life with each other. They are concerned about health and mental condition of family member’s who live apart.
How is it possible to let them share their daily experience with their family in order to share the sense of security with each other? I am going to consider how family can create a situation that they can feel mental distance closely in the physical distance by picking up letter and e-mail as basic communication tool through this research.

Transition of communications tool

There are numerous ways in which people have changed the way they communicate in the last 50 years; email is most certainly one of them. Traditionally, social interaction in the local community was the basis for communication face-to-face. Yet, today face-to-face meetings are no longer the primary way to communicate as one can use a landline telephone or any number of the computer mediated communications such as email. As communication technology has diversified, letters have become less important as routine communication. The development of the telegraph, telephone, fax and the internet have all had an impact on the writing and sending of letters. In modern industrialized nations, the exchange of personal letters has become less common, being replaced by technologies such as the telephone and also email. By the advent of popularization of the internet, the way of media selection by user has remarkably changed. The decrease of the number of letter use at last few years is proved by a lot of objective macro data.

Difference between letter and e-mail

What is the difference between letter and other communication tools?
What is the reason why the letter is still last in this world where the Internet spread out so much. The common point to both is communication of interchanging of information through characters, and the different point is immediacy of information. Though a basic feature of the network communications is indirect media mainly composed of the character. The character used with email is uniform character which is provided from technical convenience. Because of that, unique side of the personal way and habit which appears in hand-writing is excluded completely. The writing character that your hand actually wrote transmits writer's feelings and character to the reader side like same as painting, but email does not. The writing character is able to be said that it accompanies media that can transmit strong meaning. Such media like email can transmit content of sentences (information) almost faithfully, but emotionally weakened by the necessity of the technology. That is to say, characters are uniformly united, and visually the same font, even if which person drives it by any feelings and situation. You probably can guess who of the family wrote the characters by only seeing it, and I think your family can recognize your hand-writing surely.


Psychological consideration

According to George Herbert Mead 1863-1931, in human mind, there is the mechanism that makes oneself identified from other's attitudes by taking in the reaction from people internally. The meaning of information which one originate can be voluntarily recognized from the outside as others attitude. To apply this theory to writing, by reading own sentences that you wrote, the appeal to one's internal mind is occurred. For instance, when you read your dairy again, you would remember the memory and emotion which have been forgotten. At the same time, you would face yourself that used to exist in the past. Bond between people is desired, it is probably because of lonliness which is seen in a present society. It is difficult to admit own value in this society that the relationship between parents and the friend is becoming weak. Through receiving the influence from others little by little, people establish their own identity and improve their individuality. It can be regarded that the act of sending message can become not only the conversation with someone, but also the one to reflect oneself. Such a important role has existed in those communication tools.

Conclusion

The health of mental and the stability of emotion are related to the mutual interpersonal relationships between families. It might be difficult for family relationship to find out a correct answer to achieve a healthy mind and happy daily life. I think there is something important because of the distance physically or mentally. So what if the communications tool such a email can be redesigned as more humane media? The sentence which is written by the same font or original hand-writing, which can tells a lot? I would like to suggest new way of possibility of communication which is assimilated the warmth of hand-writing and the convenience of email, by making the best advantage of both tools.