When my Bookman gave me a copy of The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox by John Freeman I was interested in it not because I am swamped by email but because of the history of communication aspect of the book. And that history part of the book was fascinating. For instance, did you know that in 1635 Charles I was the first monarch to extend mail services to his subjects? But even then it was too expensive for most.
The penny post in London was set up in 1680 and anyone could mail a letter anywhere in the city for a penny. People loved it. How about this factoid: in 1873 the Royal Mail handled over 1 billion pieces of mail a year, employed 42,000 people and had more than 12,000 post offices.
In the United States it took the postal service a while longer to really take off. Sending mail from one coast to the other was very expensive and there was no guarantee it would even get there. However, in 1851 when the rate was reduced to three cents to anywhere in the U.S. mail volume shot up. In 1840 the average American sent three letters a year. By 1900 it was up to 69 per year. By 1960, the postal service regularly handled over 63 billion pieces of mail a year which comes out to 350 pieces of mail for every man, woman, and child living in the U.S. at that time.
Freeman also writes about the impact of the telegram and the telephone as well as newspapers on communications. He is careful to point out that whenever a new technology became fast and cheap a sort of tipping point would be reached and people would start using the new method more often than the old method of communication. The world got progressively smaller. And then the internet happened. And email. And our lives will never be the same again.
Now we can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. Because it is so fast and easy we are now suffering under a daily deluge in our inboxes from spam to joke and chain letter emails to legitimate emails from work and friends. In 2006 a study was reported that the average office worker sent and received 126 emails per day. Even when I worked in an office I must not have been an average worker because I never got that many emails in a day and I was tech support for over 100 people. Obviously there are office workers out there skewing the numbers and I feel sorry for them.
All is fine and good until Freeman gets to email. When that happens the interesting historical bits suddenly turn into a rant about how we have allowed not just email, but technology in general to take over our lives. He bemoans the loss of social, in person contact. At one point he says:
Whereas once cafes were filled with people talking to one another or reading books or newspapers, now you will fins people sitting alone before the glowing screen of their laptops, typing emails, working on documents, chatting with friends a thousand miles away, or surfing the Internet. Sit down with a friend for a face-to-face chat, and you may be scowled at.
Really? I’ve been to lots of different cafes in Minneapolis and have never had this experience. In fact when I go to cafes I go there to meet and catch up with friends I haven’t seen in awhile. We go there to talk. And the place is generally filled with other people who are also talking. This is not to say there aren’t people there with their laptops but they certainly aren’t the majority and they definitely aren’t scowling at anyone.
Freeman has a tendency to jump on the technology bashing bandwagon. He exaggerates frequently and makes blanket universal statements as if everyone obsessively checks their work email on vacation. He also moans, without evidence or support, about what the internet is doing to our brains and our attention span. However, a January Newsweek article about a unscientific survey made of 109 philosophers, neurobiologists and other scholars finds that these experts are pretty much in consensus that the internet hasn’t changed the way we think.
As for Freeman’s scowling laptop cafe people, a Pew Research study released in November 2009 finds that Americans who use mobile phones and the internet/ social networking have a larger more diverse social network in general than people who do not use technology. The study found that people use technology for both friends in far places and friends nearby. As for face-to-face time, the study found that in-person contact “remains the dominant means of communication with core-network members” with an average of in-person contact 210 out of 365 days per year.
I don’t want to belittle the fact that email and technology in general has changed the ways in which we communicate. Some people are overwhelmed and feel out of control. But Freeman raises the issue to the level of epidemic. Freeman’s screed does not match up with my personal experience. He does offer good advice at the end of the book about how to take back your life if you have allowed technology to take it over. Suggestions about how to handle email and things like how to decide when picking up the phone would be better than an email, as well as advice on how to redefine the boundaries between work and private life.
The book felt like it wanted to be three different books. One on the history of communication, one on how technology has changed our lives, and a self-help on email and life/time management. I wouldn’t recommend the book to anyone, but if you are feeling buried by technology, particularly email, you might like the book. Otherwise, this is one to skip.
I just wrote a post about how I feel as if connecting through social media has caused us to disconnect, some, from real life.
I may have over stated it but I feel as if in my generation, generation Y/individuals just stepping into college, the internet and social media has literally taken over our interactions.
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Another Day On Facebook
Bummer…the first part sounds really interesting. Too bad the rest didn’t work.
Heh, it’s an easy bandwagon on which to jump…but still disappointing. Always frustrating when an author gets carried away with him/herself and baldly states as fact what is probably fiction, especially in this age of easy public access to statistics. I did, at least, find YOUR post about the book funny and educational!
I’ve been interested to hear your thoughts on this book because I have been reading so much (for work) by people who see the Internet as the Big Answer to All Lives Problems and the younger “connected” generation as The Most Enlightened Savvy and Knowledgeable Generation Of All Time. And that perspective gets tiresome, which makes me itch to hear from the other side. Too bad this book sounds too skewed in the other direction.
It seems to me that e-mail and online communication in general can be both extremely beneficial and extremely limiting. Yes, if you never go out and talk to people in real life, it may not be so great. But it can also help you make virtual connections that become real-life connections–and even those connections that remain virtual have some value, especially for those who, for whatever reason (geography, shyness, whatever), have trouble finding people to connect with in their day-to-day lives.
I guess, the bottom line is, the person is still in control. I mean, social media can only take over that part of your life you allow it to take over, but you are still driving the train.
How disappointing! The beginning sounded really interesting.
My husband gets about two hundred emails a day. He could spend all day answering emails. He has to do a lot of skimming. And don’t even ask him to take a day off from checking email. Even if he’s off work, he has to moderate it or the return to work is painful…
Excellent — a book I can skip! That’s good news, because there are so many I absolutely must read. I wouldn’t like his overgeneralizing either, and his claims don’t match my personal experience as well. I’d say technology has broadened my friendships and social networks a lot, and I love how I keep in touch with people I have never met and also with people I see regularly online. In both cases, technology enhances my experience rather than detracting from it.
(having trouble commenting lately, silly computer)… I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I feel totally overwhelmed by technology and stuff, but I work in an office where I get anywhere from 25 to 100 emails a day. Most of them I read and delete, but still. And then my company just gave me a Blackberry. I simultaneously love and hate it. I am trying really hard to spend less time on the computer. Clearly I’m not succeeding very well!
This book sounds really fascinating and I’m tempted to take a closer look at it. While I don’t condone the use of blanket statements and wild exaggerations to argue one’s point, the examples you mention actually DO match up with a lot of my personal experience, and therein might lie some insight into the workings of my particular work environment and the minds that populate it. Many of my coworkers (client-facing account managers, program directors, in marketing environment) do receive ~200 emails a day, and that’s the work-related ones. (My work is more specialized, so I’m sheltered from that kind of volume, thank goodness.) And they’re definitely obsessive about it, and I think it does have an effect on their attitude toward communications in general and on the nature and quality of their interactions with people.
I don’t see anyone really overwhelmed by technology; I guess the people I know and work with have already come out the other side and accept how it fits into their lives — you either choose to engage in it, or you don’t.
The beginning does sound fun. All those factoids about how the postal service began and whatnot but I think it’s a book I’ll have to pass on. Luckily I’m not feeling overwhelmed by email and “gasp” I still mail an occasional letter to friends.
This is rather timely with the release of Google Buzz, which is causing a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth. We’ve been “brought up” to see email addresses as private (despite the fact that spammers have all our addresses already) so the idea of going public with them is causing some consternation. Then there is the public/private or professional/social divide, which takes some thought and care to manage. I suppose it comes down to the different personas we have in life—with family, with friends, with coworkers, with clients, etc. It’s second-nature to adjust in face-to-face interactions, but juggling multiple identities online is much trickier. It forces us to really be conscious about the social boundaries in our lives. Maybe that’s a good thing if it leads to more openness, as that study on the diversity of online social networks suggests.
Thanks, this was very interesting and I still think I’ll be reading the book (whilst taking your warnings on board, of course). From the few passages I’ve read (of the book), I find myself in some sort of accordance with the author. I’ve been trying to articulate my own growing sense of unease (with a singular lack of success) for some time now, so maybe this book will do the trick for me. Here’s hoping, anyway.
Very generally speaking, I’ve found that people are lazy when they write emails, dashing off tripe, never really taking the time or care (I feel) they ought to. And to see someone walking down the street texting (into their mobile phone) is to witness a kind of bland disconnection (from the surrounding world) in action.
And here in Blogland, of course – and I’m sorry to see that you appear to adopt the same habit – guests go unacknowledged and it seems to be regarded as somehow normal or acceptable to invite people into your (bloggy) home only to ignore them. I’ve always found this distasteful, vulgar and self-regarding. (It sounds brutal, I know, but I’m certainly not trying to be needley or pick a fight – nothing worse than people fighting publicly.)
I suppose the argument may go: “I don’t have time in this busy life to say hello to the people who spend some of their own time commenting on my words.” But this is rather undercut by the fact that the same people always seem to have time to write more posts, they just lack the time (or inclination) to spend their energies on other people.
And the point, I suppose, is that I can’t help feeling that this easy access to technology and the ability to publish at leisure has made a great many people very careless, to say the least, in their approach to manners and, by extension, other people. This feels, to me, like part of some greater disconnection. (I won’t even start on how the word “friend” has been devalued by Facebook and the desolating me me me-ness of the updates and “exchanges” found therein.)
I must apologise again if this feels personal or fighty or jibey. Definitely, definitely not the intention.
Kind regards etc…
TPE
TPE, I think you’ll find, if you spend any amount time with this blog, that Stefanie NEVER lets a comment go unanswered, and takes care to make every reply personal. She is a model of blog hospitality. The fact that you have judged her to be the complete opposite of what she demonstrably is says more about your internet habits than hers.
Sorry Stefanie, I know I shouldn’t feed the passive-aggressive trolls but I couldn’t help it!
Sylvia, hello. You’re quite right, I maybe rushed to a careless judgment. I based it on the first few posts, checked the comments, saw no sign of the host…and drew an erroneous conclusion (for which you have my apologies, Stefanie, although I do hope you took on board the fact that I was going out of my way not to make it personal or in any way similar to the trollish behavior Sylvia alludes to).
Sylvia, I can see why you might think I was being passive-aggressive (I worried about this for a good while afterwards), but I wasn’t. It’s simply not my style – and I don’t like to see nastiness in internet exchanges. Or in any exchanges, in fact. Sorry to have provoked your ire, but please don’t make hasty judgments of your own about my internet habits.
Kind regards etc (to both)….
TPE
Pish-posh, yes email is a potential time sink, but I remember reading a biography about Edward Burne-Jones which talked about the mail being collected and delivered six times a day, and BJ sending out his billet-doux in all of them. Now THAT’s a time sink. Humans love to communicate, and we communicate according to the person we are. There’s a Darwinian process at work – if social networking feels like its getting out of hand (and probably it is about now, having been the big new toy) then it will be reined in naturally by those who use it.
Another Day, thank you for your interesting perspective! I’m Gen X so have a very different experience with technology. I wonder though if, after you experience college for a little while if your cohorts will feel a bit more rooted in the offline world.
softdrink, I suppose I might have been more in agreement with Freeman if I felt like I were drowning in emails. But yeah, the first part of the book is great reading.
Emily, it is a big and easy bandwagon with lots of comfy cushions. I probably wasn’t exactly his target audience. I am glad you found my post funny and educational though
Teresa, there are quite a few studies you can Google around for that will provide all kinds of interesting information. The younger generation is very connected but aren’t necessarily as computer literate as everyone assumes. And of course the internet will never solve all our problems, we all know that but it doesn’t seem to stop anyone on either side of the argument from going overboard. Everything has pluses and minuses. The way I see it is that email and the internet are tools and it is up to the people that use them to create something positive or negative with them. And humans being human, well, the result is never wholly positive or wholly negative either.
Grad, you are a woman of like mind! We are indeed in control and it is up to us to drive the train as you so aptly put it!
Rebecca, the beginning was great. So your husband is one of the poor people who skew the stats? Maybe he would like the book because he could relate to the email deluge?
Dorothy, LOL, yes a book you can skip! My experience is similar to yours. Whether a person likes the book or not probably will depend on how they experience technology.
Daphne, sorry you’ve been having trouble commenting. I haven’t changed any settings, maybe the WordPress servers are being persnickity? The Blackberry is the beginning of the end for you. Give it back before it’s too late!
Isabella, it sounds like you can relate to some of the things Freeman writes about. Maybe your coworkers all need to read this book? I don’t know anyone who is overwhelmed either though I know a lot of people who love technology and hate it. I guess how you handle email depends on which side of the love/hate relationship you are on.
Iliana, the factoids are fun and there are a couple books in the bibliography that I’m going to have to look up. And *gasp* I still write letters too. We can be anomalies together
Sylvia, I haven’t even checked out Google Buzz yet, I’ve been ignoring the, um, buzz. But I have been following the big row over privacy. You make a good point about multiple online identities. The internet certainly makes boundaries fuzzy and I don’t think we’ve quite figured out how to manage that piece yet. And thank you! No apologies necessary.
tpe, I don’t think people are so much lazy when they write emails, but more in a hurry or distracted because we are so often expected to multitask these days. It is unfortunate that you have gotten a wrong impression about me. And I am not sure what blogs you read, but the ones I visit frequently are all run by very kind, generous people. You did indeed jump to a careless judgement. While I accept your apology, I also need to say that you might want to be a little more careful about how and where you rant, because that is what you have done even if you think otherwise. It makes a very bad impression, especially if good manners are so important to you.
Litlove, mail six times a day? Good gracious, that seems almost worse than email! I like your Darwinian process theory. I think you are right. I’ve been reading about companies that are trying to find ways to cut back in the amount of email. It will be interesting to see what sort of solutions arise.
Stefanie: I feel as if I am beginning to feel rooted back in the offline world. I recently began the shift where I associated with high school students to where I associated mainly with college Juniors and Seniors. (I know way too many people)
In conjunction with that the managing of my blog has, for some reason, made me forget about my Facebook and “connecting” with people online. It is a weird phenomenon.
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Another Day On Facebook
Hello, Stefanie, thanks for taking the time to respond.
Yes, good point (about the multi-tasking). I suppose – and I’ll get back to the groveling apology in a moment, I promise – my immediate reaction to such a thing would be: but who expects us to multi-task and why must we feel obliged to fulfill these expectations? It may start to appear (or feel, in some cases) like a dizzying roundabout with nobody feeling able to jump off.
It’s the sheer (and comparatively sudden) breadth of the means of communication, I mean to say – emails, blogs, Facebook, Twitter et al – that may leave the participant feeling frazzled, worn-out and empty. And an impression is often (okay, sometimes) given that those involved fail to concentrate on the one thing long enough, only distractedly and surfacely exploring any given idea or conversation, perhaps because the pressure to keep up feels too much? I don’t know.
Like I said in my first (disastrous) response, I have real trouble articulating what I would like to say about all of this as the subject simply feels too huge. And so yes, I can see that the end result may appear like ranting (although, if I were being kind to myself, I should say it was merely a poorly assembled selection of ideas blurted out with an exasperated excitement).
I followed you home from “Kate’s Book Blog”, incidentally, having had my interest piqued by the quote she used and by your own subsequent response. Sometimes people like to know how others found their blog, even if the visit leaves a very bad impression. (Memo to self: overcome your visceral distaste for exclamation marks post haste, it may help to highlight the lightness of tone.)
Anyway, sorry for everything. Although I still feel that the things I said were pretty fair, I wish wish wish I had made it clearer that the throwaway remark about you appearing not to respond to your guests and the subsequent mouth-splurge that followed were not meant to be connected, that the ideas being put forward were general. Looking back, I can see that this might have felt like a sustained (and very unpleasant) personal attack.
I did say in my original response that it was no such thing, of course, but this clearly wasn’t enough. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been banging my head slowly against a wall in a very prolonged fit of self-loathing. I utterly abjure fractious and/or unfriendly behaviours on the internet and so I’m sorry for any horribleness I may have caused you to feel.
Since you ask (sort of), the blogs I read (and, in one instance, host) are very friendly places, as I’ve learned to avoid the nastier ones.
I ordered the book, by the way, and your blog seems like exactly the sort of blog I like to read (which may make you hold your head in despair, I know.)
Kind regards etc…
TPE
Another Day, how very interesting! I am especially intrigued about what you say regarding your blog since blogs are social too, but in a different way. Perhaps because it is a slower kind of social? More in depth? You give me much to think about.
TPE, I believe your sincerity. Shall we call it water under the bridge, shake virtual hands and start over?
I’ve spent too much time blogging tonight and need to go work on some school homework but I am interested in your further comments on email so let me roll it around in my brain and see what I can come up with for tomorrow.
Stefanie: Managing a blog and attempting to get more reader’s/subscribers takes a copious amount of work. This work is usually reading other blogs and learning what readers like or are interested in. I spend less time socializing and more time researching and marketing. Many times I run across blogs that spark my interest and spend the next 30 minutes reading even though they have nothing to do with my blog.
So yes, I am involved with social media through my blog but it is different. I am not constantly spammed by Farmville updates or individual’s spontaneous thoughts on twitter. I am not viewing pictures of my friends night out. Instead I am continuously trying to engage readers in a conversation and at the end of the day when I am staring at my computer screen I just want to turn it off.
Through my blog I am provoking my mind to produce and develop ideas by writing and reading other’s thoughts. Social media that is for mere connecting, in my humble opinion, does not do this. It is a continuous party and one blogger recently compared it to a club where we are all at the bar essentially blowing off steam.
Blog Link : http://lancewiggs.com/2010/02/15/the-grandmother-effect-is-starting-for-facebook/
Yes, terrific idea, amens all round and phewy. Thank you for your good grace, Stefanie.
In what I must guess (and secretly hope) is the most random and inexplicable peace-offering you’ve ever been given, I offer you a picture (taken today) of two chickens from my garden. (I was going to say something on your Philosophising with Chickens post, but then suddenly thought better of it – I think I’ll wait a couple of weeks, let you recover, and then we may hope to start again.)
I’m not terribly good with html, so I’ll just need to hope that this link to the picture works. Here goes…..
Ta-da!
Did it work?
Kind regards etc…..
TPE
Another Day, heh, don’t need to tell me how much work managing a blog is
I did some poking around at your blog and you have some interesting ideas. And thanks for that link, the comments were especially thought provoking. I agree with you and Lance that Facebook will eventually fade and I have read a few articles about people jumping ship.
TPE, love your chickens! And I am thoroughly recovered so don’t be afraid to comment
Now, for the email book. I think you will like it given what you have said. After you read it, please let me know what you think. You are right in your comment to ask who expects us to multi-task. I think part of it is us and part of it is the workplace especially in the current economy where places are trying to do the same amount of business with fewer employees. In terms of the social networking I think you are right about feeling frazzled from a pressure to keep up. But we do put that pressure on ourselves because there is no one making us update Facebook and Twitter and goodness knows what else. Unfortunately, I think many people are having a hard time stepping back and drawing a line because of social dynamics. Goodness, if I don’t update my Facebook status, I might lose my friends! It’s high school all over again. *shudder*
Stefanie: Thank you for visiting my blog. I am no longer trying to create a huge following but more of small and steadily growing following. Hopefully, I will begin to do that in the next few posts.
And no problem about the link. That post seems to be generating an extreme amount of conversation as does this one.
Until your next post.
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Another Day On Facebook
Ha – the truth/reality is almost always more interesting and nuanced than the ooga-booga purveyors make it out to be.
I’m generally way more interested in descriptive versus perscriptive/judgmental assessments of technology’s impacts on humanity/society: i.e. the reality of how humans (for good or ill) use tech rather than sky-is-falling assessments bemoaning that tech is ruining society in whatever way (even if it is
.
Which isn’t to say I don’t make my own personal judgments on how/why humans are going off the rails on this, that or the other thing. But philosophically and discussionally (yes I’m making that a word
) speaking – I’m much more interested in exploring the underlying whys/hows of human/social tendencies that lead us to behave as we do on topics like this, than beating us all about the head simply for the fact that s/thing IS happening, or all the evils and ills it’s bringing.
Good to get your assessment of this one – as I’d seen and considered checking it out, but I’ll skip on past as I foresee having many of the same objections as you.
Another Day, with Facebook in the news so much of late with all the privacy uproar, I’m sure you will find yourself with lots to say!
Tara, I am totally with you. I am also more interested in the human social tendencies than arguing over whether email/computers/the internet are ruining the world. We can argue about that until the cows come home but it still remains at bottom people making choices and why we make the choices we do is what’s important. So yeah, skip this one because you won’t get any of that.