From 1993 to 1996, the Island Independent newspaper offered incisive, wide-ranging commentary on community and bioregional issues, and evidenced a literary panorama and level of excellence which was sorely needed, and is sorely missed.
How people write to each other depends on circumstances and relationships. Sometimes they write this way:
"If you do not intend to go down either this fall or in the spring, write a letter to me by the first opportunity and inform me what you intend to do that I may know if I may expect you or not...."
And sometimes this: "Always, always , and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee for we shall meet again."
Or even: "If there isn't a letter or a wire when I get home this afternoon I'll phone you...In case I can't reach you, though, before this does, wire me...."
It doesn't much matter that of the above threesome, the first letter was written in the 1700's, the second during the Civil War, and the third during the 1940's. What's important is that all three are letters. E-mail, on the other hand, is something different: a new communication medium that lies somewhere between letters and phone calls. Like a phone call, e-mail is handy and immediate. I can jot a message at any hour of the day, and it will usually get where it's going before I can walk to the kitchen. Like a letter, e-mail is text based and personal. Unlike letters and phone calls, however, e-mail has one very big weakness.
The Achilles heel of e-mail is its inability to convey context and emotion. The context part of this failure is due to the brevity of e-mail messages, which are often so short that they're open to misunderstanding. Letters are easier to understand simply because they are longer, and the reader gets more clues. The emotion part of the failure results from e-mail's limitation to pure text: everything you want to say has to come from the keyboard.
Some quick fixes for e-mail have evolved. The characters <> indicate emphasis, as in "No
Telephone calls supply context via voice intonation. If, in a phone conversation, someone says to me: "Why do you care?", I know what they mean because I hear which word they emphasize. But e-mail can't convey non-verbal information, so if the same person e-mails me that same message, and the rest of the message provides no clues, I have to guess at the meaning. Did they mean "Why do you care?", "Why do you care?", or "Why do you care?" It's easy to guess wrong, and it's easy to read in one's own thoughts. For example, if I suddenly get a mental picture of the writer sneering at me, saying "Whadda yoou care?", now I'm "hearing" a much different conversation and I'm likely to fire back something like "Now you listen here, you bleep bleep....."
Those lines are the opening salvoes of an argument. And if they happen to occur within an e-mail group, they may start what is affectionately known as a "flame war", a curiously apt term because a flame needs tinder (vagueness or misunderstanding) and heat (intentional or unintentional provocation) to get going. Most flame wars begin unintentionally, but a full blown group argument can do so much damage to good will (and to the pocketbooks of those who pay by the minute) that some groups feature firefighters (group moderators) who stand ready to douse any conflagration and prevent group meltdown.
Fortunately, there is a personal fire extinguisher as close as the keyboard, to whit: "I think I misunderstood you. I'm sorry if my message offended you in any way, and if it did, I apologize. I'm interested in what you have to say. Would you please explain what you meant?" These lines can be difficult if you are emotionally invested in a point of view, but the fact is that they work and are regularly expressed in all groups that value and support good communication. Recognizing when to say the magic words is an e-mail skill that's learned, just like one learns how to dial a phone, or address a letter.
Naturally, there's an ecomm term for the attributes of good communication--netiquette--and its common-sense fundamentals are these: Be polite; Ask if you don't understand; Grant others the respect you wish to be granted; and Don't e-mail when you're angry. The last point is possibly the most important: give yourself (and everyone else) a break: bake cookies, take out the trash, walk the dog, or read the Independent. As Ambrose Pierce said: "Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
I should shine a light on one other chuck-hole in the e-mail road, just so you don't trip one dark and rainy night. It's the one that appears, quick as a wink, when you assume an e-mail correspondent is "just like me". In fact, e-mail correspondents usually aren't like you or me, may not be American, and may not even reside in an English-speaking country. That makes communication a lot trickier. E-mail, despite it's ease, is not a conversation between neighbors across the back fence; it's more a conversation between distant strangers who would like to be friends.
So is it thumbs up of thumbs down to e-mail? The answer is an enthusiastic thumbs up! E-mail's shortcomings can be handled by just a sprinkle of netiquette, and its advantages--easy pigeonholing of hard-to-categorize information, disdain for distance, and lightning speed--will let you do more things, easier and faster. Which leaves more time for the really important stuff, like walking on the beach, or having a cup of coffee with a friend.
Today's Cyber-Quotes:
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. --Popular Mechanics, 1949.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. --Pablo Picasso
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Column Number Five, unpublished.