Typewriters

I think the important bit in your text is the content exchange, not necessarily the means.

Yes and no. The means are part of the content, imho, not the most important part but not anecdotal either.

Each letter/object would be different and unique, because of the way it has been made, because of its quirks and defaults, and it would have to be shared and transmitted among members, one at a time as a unique object. Copies could be made, obviously, but they would just be copies and we would know/see it: it’s hard to copy the imprints of the slug into the sheet of paper, or the ink of the fountain pen being absorbed by the same paper.

As much as I can understand it (I’m no expert), before typewriters and carbon copies, people wanting to send the same letter to more than one person used to write multiple copies of it. But each copy would also be unique.

Postman cracking a smile every now and then is an extra, not the main gig.

Indeed, it is. While I was writing that comment I suddenly remembered a few anecdotes one of my friends used to tell me regarding the postman when he delivered my letters to him. I don’t think any email server ever had a smile on its face while delivering an email, no matter how funny/silly said email was ;)

As such - digital exchange can be done completely anonymously on a personal level and almost anonymously from the government’s perspective.

My ideas was not as much to get out of reach of spying authorities or to be anonymous. In the end, for most of us at least, all it takes is a warrant or some law to remove said anonymity. I don't think analog is a solution to preserve our anonymity either, btw. Here to, a warrant/a law is all it takes to be able to open any letter, while postcards are not even enclosed.

Here in France, I'm already legally bound to give my encryption keys if a judge ever asks for them, and if I don't comply I can be fined/imprisoned. Also, us foreigners willing to go visit the USA are now required to give border agents full access to all our social media accounts, including login and password. I have no plan to visit the USA anytime soon but if that was the case I certainly would not try to outsmart those people by hiding anything from them.

More than anonymity, I was considering getting away from the preying eyes of those (big) businesses and their AIs that are constantly trying to mine and to monetize our every move and words… and soon our thoughts too?

Also, I was following up on the idea mentioned by Joe in the video about (re) learning to value the imperfections in our (analog) works, to see it as the mark of a real human-made creation. Something dear to me and that would be hard to obtain digitally: there would not be much to visually distinguish my manuscript typed in Times New Roman 12 double-spaced, from any other manuscript typed alike. And it’s more indistinguishable when using completely unformatted text like in messaging apps or web forms. Or even when opening an epub.

Encrypt your message with a recipient’s public GPG key and off you go. The only thing that can be tracked is the fact the message was sent.

I have been using an encrypted email since the very early 00s and I have barely ever used it because almost no one is willy to use one on the other end of the tube. That's the main issue, I'm afraid. Adding PGP or even just to switch from, say, Gmail to a fully encrypted email provider like Proton or Tuta (even when it’s free and no matter how simple they made it) is too much to ask.

I really have no idea how doable this analog exchange thing would be. It’s just something I had been thinking about for quite a while and Joe’s video seemed like a very good opportunity to share it. Maybe, probably, it will go nowhere but it’s still worth trying :)