Touch-Tone News and Rotary Blues

How simply mah-vellous! The ingenious ``New-Fangled Editorial,'' June 8, gives us the ultimate time-saving device for appearing well informed without ever having to think. Smashing, just smashing. Elizabeth A. Brown, Paris, Ill.

It may come as a surprise, but editorial writers do occasionally have interesting ideas. Something like the retrieval system this editorial humorously describes should in fact be implemented. Quick access to the nation's editorials would be of value to students, legislators, lobbyists, and editorial writers. If the most obscure scientific papers - sometimes no longer than an editorial - can be pulled from the world's voluminous literature using key words, so could editorials. R. Hendrickson Jr., Newark, Del.

Many thanks for the technological break-through in introducing the touch-tone editorial. This innovation is a much needed feature given the plethora of urgent, not-to-be-put-off difficulties demanding our attention these days. We couldn't possibly handle this wide range of important issues without this computerized service. However, by the time we're through reading the ``recorded'' message and pressing all the proper buttons, there is no time left for the editorial. Oh well, chalk it up to the progress of addictive electronic dependency.

Computerization overwhelms us with knowledge, but doesn't give us the one thing we really need - the wisdom for making right decisions.

As for my access to the ``new-fangled'' editorial - I still have a dial newspaper. Ralph Emerson, Tacoma, Wash.

Touch-tone answering systems are more than enough to try my patience. Inevitably I press a wrong number and have to start over again. And if I have any questions when I have finished the sequence of options, I have to wait for an attendant to come on the line. I've found the best way around this system is to act as though I have a rotary dial on my telephone - and then play a game of solitaire while waiting. Yours in ``press 4'' .... Edward W. Borchardt, San Diego