When Companies Still Read Letters

….Technology, Aging, and the Loss of Human Scale

Technology has changed, and our experience with the world has changed along with it. We are human beings navigating systems that increasingly seem to have less space for that humanity. Many of the institutions surrounding us no longer operate through human attention, judgment, or accountability in the ways they once did. Increasingly, they are built to process, reset, and move on.

A recent experience involving fraud, virtual credit cards, and automated systems unexpectedly brought back a memory from childhood: my grandfather sitting at the kitchen table in the 1990s, angrily handwriting letters to Reader’s Digest demanding they stop sending him books he never wanted.

At the time, the scene felt almost absurd to me. How could he possibly believe that somewhere inside a massive corporation, an actual person was opening envelopes, reading his complaints, and responding?

But the longer I live, the more I realize he grew up in a world where that expectation once made sense.

When I was a child, corporations still carried traces of human scale. People wrote letters—actual letters—and somewhere inside a building, another person opened them. Someone unfolded the paper, read the handwriting, perhaps paused at the tone or wording, and decided how to respond. Companies were large then too, but there was still an assumption that communication might eventually reach an actual human being.

My grandfather believed that. So he wrote his letters.

Now, decades later, I found myself trying to convince a major credit card company to investigate what appears to be an internally created fraudulent virtual card connected to my account—one being used in ways strangely connected to my travel. I wanted them to look internally, identify who created it, and understand how it happened.

But the system has no pathway for that.

They cannot actually affect the fraudulent card itself because it is virtual. They can only cancel my real physical card and issue me another one, despite the fact that the problem does not appear to originate there. The idea that someone inside the institution might genuinely investigate the underlying issue—is not merely low priority. It is not an option at all.

The system is built to reset, not to understand.

That, to me, feels like one of the defining experiences of modern technology. Not simply speed or convenience, but the gradual disappearance of human-scale interaction. Problems move through systems instead of toward people. Communication becomes procedural rather than relational.

And perhaps this is also part of aging.

Not simply getting older, but slowly realizing that the instincts and assumptions that once connected people to the world no longer function the same way. Every generation eventually encounters this moment: the realization that the world they understood has quietly been replaced by one operating according to unfamiliar rules.

As a child, I thought my grandfather misunderstood the modern world.

Now I understand something else: he remembered a different one.

And increasingly, I find myself doing the same thing he was doing all those years ago—trying to reach a person inside a system no longer designed for human conversation.

Life can be complicated, messy, and rarely progresses in a straight line.  PeoplePsych is a Chicago-based psychotherapy group that treats adults seeking profound change in their lives.  We provide services that affirm the dignity, worth, and value of all individuals. We strive to create a safe non-judgemental space for clients to explore the issues that bring them. To connect with one of our therapists, please contact our Clinical Coordinator at (312) 252-5252 or intake@peoplepsych.com.