The Romance of E-Mail: Ground Rules

I am no Luddite about electronic communication. Quite the contrary. Exhilarating, intoxicating, and addictive most accurately describe my own romance with e-mail. I find much to agree with in the assertion recently proffered by my fellow historian Edward L. Ayers: e-mail’s ubiquity is another manifestation of humanity’s relentless search for community.

But I do harbor some foreboding about my own, easily detectable, romance with e-mail. Hence this cautionary tale, reminiscent of Saul Bellow’s long-suffering Moses E. Herzog. Readers of the celebrated novel Herzog (1964)–written when correspondents relied solely upon surface mail, or occasionally air mail--recall that Herzog held himself back from dispatching every last one of the many, many letters he had labored to compose. These wise acts of self-restraint, as I remember them, constituted one luminous mark upon Herzog’s otherwise baleful psyche. Abraham Lincoln, another prolific writer of letters, also concluded not to mail some of them wisely recognizing they would undermine his larger goals.

My own romance with e-mail began in 1993. The very first message I transmitted was to a dear friend on the West Coast. By way of reply, I received this felicitous message: “Welcome to the cyber world.” Little did I know! My beloved spouse of nearly forty years long has suspected that e-mail is her sole rival for my affection.

Truth be known, I was a relative latecomer to e-mail. Research and development on e-mail extended back to the late 1950s, sponsored by the American military in the heat of the Cold War as an emergency communications system. In its earliest manifestation, a primitive form of e-mail became available in 1971. Within five years, according to a history prepared by Ian R. Hardy, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, e-mail had attained considerable popularity in academic circles. Another benchmark year was 1986 when the number of e-mail users first exceeded 10,000; the statistic surpassed 100,000 in1988. Commercial e-mail providers–MCI Mail and Compuserve–appeared in 1989. As of 2003, according to the Census Bureau, 55 percent of Americans had internet access in their homes; five years earlier it was 26 percent. E-mail is cited as the most common reason for using a home computer.

Ray Tomlinson, a computer scientist educated at M.I.T., is to e-mail what Alexander Graham Bell was to the telephone or, even earlier, what Samuel F. B. Morse was to telegraph. Tomlinson is widely credited with sending that very first e-mail (to himself at another nearby computer) in 1971. Contrary to claims of others, he insists that he did not furnish the world with the now universally recognized @. I commend to anyone interested in learning more about Tomlinson and his scientific contributions leading up to the first e-mail a charming first-person memoir recounting its origins. As you surely surmised, it is on-line.

In the face of my own (obvious) enthusiasms, I also have contemplated e-mail’s abuses and devised a handful of basic ground rules. E-mail is best used routinely, I believe. Possibilities include: trying to establish a meeting time; to set up a mutually convenient moment to speak by telephone about something pressing; to remind a recipient about a looming deadline; or to circulate an agenda for a forthcoming meeting. Avoid it for conveying anything that transcends the mildly contestable: a formal warning to a staffer who habitually arrives late; an annual evaluation of a colleague that is less than positive; or conveying key information that surely will constitute a major disappointment for the intended recipient (“The senior members of the department have completed their deliberations, concluding not to advance your candidacy for promotion for at least another year.”) My advice: deliver difficult or unhappy news face-to-face, behind a closed door. (Conducting the preliminary phases of a budding romance via e-mail, in my eyes, probably warrants an exception to all of the above).

Nor should e-mail–or romance itself–ever replace human encounters about substantive issues. Indeed, I value meetings–this statement is surely contestable--ever more highly in our fast-moving cyber age where face-to-face interactions can easily be avoided. Nor is e-mail a satisfactory substitute for the essential process of deliberation–say among members of a team of co-workers charged with exploring a nettlesome problem--that is required to yield substantive outcomes which are consensual and sustainable. Flaming (by which I mean elaborate statements expressing very strong, frequently harsh, and potentially hurtful opinions that are usually tinged with invectives) should be avoided and discouraged. E-mail seldom resolves a problem; it is far more likely that e-mail will exacerbate matters, possibly inflicting damage not easily repaired. In its most extreme applications e-mail will diminish or possibly even destroy human bonds.

A confessional coda! Participating in a meeting in a distant city, I ruefully resorted to paying a $7.00 fee to a commercial enterprise for fifteen minutes of computer time to read my e-mail messages. Although I didn’t relish the encounter with my e-mail a whit in this circumstance, nor could I restrain myself from paying the fee with alacrity. The next day, filled with remorse, I sought out the public library–just two blocks away, I discovered--to again read my e-mail. This time there was no humiliating fee. Indeed, the library staff was warm and gracious in helping me gain instant access.

And having shared with you these intimacies about my romance with e-mail, I turn away to check for further messages from cyber space.