The BS of Email

[chris vickery]

I like your idea of an app.
It puts into context the "look before you leap" idea, same goes for the think before you speak angle.
I find that all too often that email is so impersonal; thoughts and ideas are misconstrued and misunderstood. We are all not great writers or composers of essays.
One example if you will of how something can be miscommunicated;
1) send me your response
or
2) SEND ME YOUR RESPONSE!
or
3) I TOLD YOU THAT A RESPONSE WAS REQUIRED, NOW!

In this example, what is being asked for? What is the mood of the sender? Is a sense of urgency driving the aggresive nature of the sentence? Was the sender joking of messing about? How easily does a curt sentence become understood as being rude, impatient or demanding?
Lets all remeber that email was originally intended to supply information quickly, concisely and with clarity. The emotional context cannot be imposed or relayed easily with electronic communication. This is where it lacks behind the simple tool we call a telephone.

[Phil Waterman]

Years ago there was a thread on MLU about the difference in collecting or searching for information by phone or in a written form. My point back then when forums were relatively new idea was, to decry the American habit of picking up the phone instead of responding to a written inquire in writing.

My reasoning was that if you don't have a recorder running on the phone call much information is quickly lost where any form of written communication at least gives you a good chance of preserving the information the other person is imparting.

I singled out America because at that time because I was looking back to my early 1980s search for information on CMPs. Working from the MVPAs predecessors directory I wrote to every CMP owner listed including information on my HUP, a couple of photos and my general questions. A majority responded, those in the US all replied by phone and unfortunately most of the information and even who responded was gone with my memory in a short time. While I got great detailed letters with photos and drawings to answer my questions from Canada, Europe, and most surprisingly to me at the time from New Zealand and Australia. Several of those letters must have been responded to the day they were received, because I was getting responses in a little over a week.

Most of the information given in this written form is still in my files. Now I've tried to save all the information sent by e-mail in the years since. The photos I have succeeded in saving nearly 100%. Less so the actual e-mails, the lose of e-mail from not having a really effective way of saving and cataloging the e-mails. This failure to save and backup was recently driven home when I lost a large number of e-mails as never received or failed to save when I moved them to the CMP folder.

Now I will read what I've said and see if I should post it. Ok I read it made a few corrections and decided to post.

Cheers Phil

[Lang]

As with all things it is a middle of the road approach.

In the old letter writing days there were as many offensive and misinterpreted communications as there are now only a lot slower. The problem is when you wrote a letter it went only to the direct object of your communication (unless you wrote a letter to the newspaper editor) now it goes out to the world for thousands to misinterpret.

My old 92 year old dad has discovered the computer with a vengeance and made it his life's (no green bananas in the fridge) work to get everyone over 75 on line. The freedom and social contact that emails and Google give to housebound old people is more than astounding it is a miracle - talk about changing lives!

The computer has allowed ignorant a... h....s to communicate with people who would have ignored or even shunned them in the past. Just as we took thousands of years to develop manners in speech and hundreds of years to develop manners in writing so we will evolve a system of manners in electronic communication - it just takes time.

Lang