Re: E-mail: How does it affect our work?

["Delaney, Misti" <ncr02!ncr02!mdelaney -at- UCS01 -dot- ATTMAIL -dot- COM>]

From: Price, Becca
Subject: RE: E-mail: How does it affect our work?
Date: Monday, September 18, 1995 5:55PM

having been email-less for the last 4 or 5 days, I have a great number of
thoughts on this topic.

I belong to a few lists, and get information fwd'd from others (we split up
the lists, and keep each other informed - saves time).

What I find happens is that I get *involved* in everyone's lives - it's as
bad as getting hooked on the soaps... worse, in a way, because these lists
have many more threads (and more complex ones) than any soap opera would
dream of having subplots.  I've made good friends that I don't really know
outside of our posts and how we choose to represent ourselves to each other.


My home life is full and rich - too full, sometimes, and too rich.  On
email, I can pace myself, control just how much interaction *I* want to have
at any given moment.  Plus, email friends are non-demanding.  they can wait
until I have the time to get back to them - or if they can't wait, at least
I don't have much more than junk mail I can delete unread.

Time spent on email is intensly quality time: on the technical lists, I get
technical information in a compressed form - pithy and to the point, or at
least I can ignore any digressions.  other special interest lists (the
adoption list, for example) is equally quality time, spent discussing a
specific topic with people I know are as involved in it as I am.

This is why spams and ads are so annoying: they invade my private space
masquerading as friends.

there's more, but this will do.