c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com).

UNDATED _ In another nod to the past, a North Carolina legislator wants to minimize automated telephone systems at state offices by requiring that a live person answer the phone.

Frankly, I would miss the woman whose recorded voice guides me through automated menus _ no matter where in the United States I am calling. She is cheerful, efficient, not a new hire, and I never have to identify myself, spell my name or listen for disapproval in her voice.

The legislator’s bill would insert a live person into the process of getting information. He must not remember the experience of being bounced from person to person, each ricochet requiring a mini-biography and mission statement.

My bank and I rarely converse, for example, and that’s fine with me. I call frequently to check on my account. All I need to remember is my national identity _ aka Social Security _ number and a code. Sixty seconds later, we’re done.

In fact, I can make deposits from my car and can withdraw cash from an automated teller at 9 p.m. Do I miss standing in line before a constantly changing cast of live tellers to whom I am a perfect stranger whose signature needs to be verified? Not especially.

May I also sing the praises of voice mail? I probably make or receive 100 calls a day at work. Nearly all are to seek or to give short bursts of information. With voice mail, I can ask my question and leave. Sure, it’s not the same as calling home, but that’s OK. Calling home means a busy signal, indicating the teen-age tom-tom is working.

Besides, if I want to chat, there’s always e-mail, technology’s great gift to interpersonal blather. Since my parents got e-mail, for example, we chat back and forth almost daily. Most times, we have little to say, certainly nothing worthy of a letter that would be opened with anticipation and scoured for detail. But exchanging tidbits is good for the soul.

Modern technology, in other words, isn’t so bad.

Maybe the Tar Heel legislator remembers village life where people walked down the street, nodded at lifetime friends, chatted at the bank and exchanged town gossip while buying a license plate. But for most of us, those days are gone. Given a choice between putting a $20 check in the mail or waiting in a smoky line before a bored motor vehicles clerk, I’ll take the 32-cent route any day. So, I imagine, would the clerk.

Yes, there are downsides, like unwanted e-mail. If the legislator wants to help, he might sit on the”spammer”who sends out 14 million pieces of e-mail a day in pursuit of the statistical probability that someone will be foolish enough to read it.

The problem with people, of course, is people. We get on each other’s nerves. We get tired and crabby. It may sound heretical, but I wonder if we sometimes aren’t better off talking to machines than to each other, especially around 5 p.m.

My larger point is this: Modernity is OK. It’s different, and it requires adjustments and a few new skills. Community-building takes more work. But there was no particular virtue to yesterday. If village life had been so great, we wouldn’t have moved to cities. No evil genie forced banks to develop ATM machines. Believe me, if banking customers preferred live tellers, the machines would shut down tomorrow.

Nostalgia is a fine emotion, but except for our hair and waistlines, most of what we left behind we chose to leave behind. We can’t have it both ways. We can’t race full tilt into a future populated by computers, voice mail and drive-in services, and then blame someone for taking away the personal touch.

The politics of nostalgia will garner headlines, but the world we inhabit is a world we created by our choices. If we don’t like it, we can talk to our neighbors, write letters, strike up a conversation at the bank, sit in our state legislator’s waiting room and do it differently. In the process, of course, we might discover why we bought the answering machine.

MJP END EHRICH