How do you use email?

[+ Charlie]

The recent post about answering the phone raised the observation that many people consider email an antiquated technology. I have been a prolific letter writer since my teens, and it has always been my primary means of communicating with friends and family. Often I didn't have a phone for personal calls--in college, living in other countries, traveling--but I could always write a letter and mail it. Non-local phone calls were also expensive, and required use of an intermediary like a long distance operator. The first time I lived in Europe, I brought a tape recorder with me, made cassette tapes, and mailed them back every week to my spouse in the US. When email became available at the end of the 20th century, I saw it as the perfect solution to my communication needs, especially for recipients at a distance. Now I use it even when I could use a phone, even for brief messages. Of course, many of my friends and family are also elderly, and don't like trying to text on a cell phone.

The main disadvantage to email is that I need more equipment that just a pen, a piece of paper and a stamp, or a working phone. Also, I can't get an immediate response the way I can with a phone call, and I don't even know if my communication has been received unless I get a reply, but that is equally true of snail mail. The clutter of spam/scam emails is a nuisance, but they are easy to recognize and ignore, and the number of spam texts is getting just as bad.

So, what is your attitude toward email? Have you abandoned it in favor of newer options?

 

[+ azdr0710]

I prefer email because the keyboard is bigger!  

[+ WilliamM]

No. I communicate with a mostly quiet member (Kenny) by email.

Thank you, @Charlie

[foxy]

Friends kid me because I not only write and send emails but they tend to be long with proper punctuation and caps where appropriate.  
There are times if I get a reply I wonder if the person I sent the email to has even read it? Or just misread it entirely? So I go back and reread it and it seems clear to me. I wonder why I didn’t just phone? But first I send a text to make an appointment for a phone call. Are you free to talk tonight about 8pm? If I get a reply that says I’ll call you tomorrow I know that probably won’t happen. At that point I give up and think it wasn’t all that important anyway. 

[Rod Hagen]

I sent my first email in 1993.  I was astounded.  I FTP'd some files shortly after that and did some IRC chats as well.  And Telneted now that I think about it.  Then of course Mosaic, then Netscape, arrived and the rest is history.

I send more emails a day than I do texts.  Although, that's not entirely true because I have some friends who use Text as a sort of stream of consciousness and I'll simply reply briefly with a "typical"; that usually applies.

Emails I love.  I look back at my emails from 20 years ago, and more, and they were much longer.  Much more thoughtful and that was due in large part because many of them were responses to emails that were also long, so we'd respond to lines directly underneath each other's lines.  Like corrections.  Or a message board.  

I use email to both stay in touch and also to plan things.  Details can get lost in text exchanges, but details are fairly easy to find in an email.

Also, I save emails.  Periodically, I do look through old ones.  It's a sort of journaling I guess, or like saving old letters.

[jeezifonly]

Communication technology is changing faster than we can keep up with. We edit complicated or nuanced ideas into an emoji, which is a hint that the future lies in “the less said the better.

A touchscreen that reads minds will catch us all off-guard. 

[Luv2play]

Just the other day I was looking for some letters from the 1970's and only found them after going through 7 or 8 shoeboxes crammed with letters spanning 5 decades. In the last decade most of my saved correspondence is email.

I know after I am gone my letter collection will be tossed but until then I can relive the past the occasional time by just opening a few letters. What makes my collection interesting is that I led a very international life and so letters from many different countries, especially European ones.

I have the impression that the younger people today who just use these ephemeral means of communication will look back in 30 years on a great void in their lives. They will have nothing to remind themselves of what the details of their lives were nor who was a significant presence to them in the past. It is an important anchor that will have been cast aside.

[samhexum]

22 hours ago, Charlie said:

How do you use email?

Gee, and I thought I was technologically ignorant...

6 hours ago, Luv2play said:

What makes my collection interesting is that I led a very international life and so letters from many different countries, especially European ones.

You could probably fetch a pretty penny for your correspondence with Q & Miss Moneypenny.

Edited February 22, 2022 by samhexum
just for the hell of it

[gallahadesquire]

My penultimate job was, as an anesthesiologist, evaluating patients preoperatively. I had arranged with one surgeon that, if I had an issue that was important but not urgent, I would write out an email and then send a test to his beeper saying “You’ve got mail.” It didn’t interrupt whatever he was doing (especially if he was operating) and it left a paper trail of what was going on. 

[Rod Hagen]

6 hours ago, Luv2play said:

I have the impression that the younger people today who just use these ephemeral means of communication will look back in 30 years on a great void in their lives. They will have nothing to remind themselves of what the details of their lives were nor who was a significant presence to them in the past. It is an important anchor that will have been cast aside.

Remember 20 years ago when companies started offering to (charge a lot to) transfer our photos and 8mm movies into digital files for preservation and simplicity?  Perhaps, something similar will happen with Facebook, Instagram, etc.  "Would you like paper copies of your last 30 years of tweets?  Send $$$ COD to PO Box 451 Lutherville Maryland, 21094"

Edited February 22, 2022 by Rod Hagen

[+ Charlie]

7 hours ago, Luv2play said:

Just the other day I was looking for some letters from the 1970's and only found them after going through 7 or 8 shoeboxes crammed with letters spanning 5 decades. In the last decade most of my saved correspondence is email.

I know after I am gone my letter collection will be tossed but until then I can relive the past the occasional time by just opening a few letters. What makes my collection interesting is that I led a very international life and so letters from many different countries, especially European ones.

I have the impression that the younger people today who just use these ephemeral means of communication will look back in 30 years on a great void in their lives. They will have nothing to remind themselves of what the details of their lives were nor who was a significant presence to them in the past. It is an important anchor that will have been cast aside.

I, too, have boxes of letters from the 60s to 90s. The main difference is that with email I not only have the letters I received, but also the ones that I sent, and my computer can do a quick search through them to find what I want.

[Luv2play]

7 hours ago, samhexum said:

Gee, and I thought I was technologically ignorant...

You could probably fetch a pretty penny for your correspondence with Q & Miss Moneypenny.

It's actually more interesting than that. The Internet has provided the ability to track down people you knew many decades ago if they have become prominent in the intervening years. In one case my collection of letters I saved would be very compromising to the other party so I will have to burn them at some point.

[samhexum]

13 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

In one case my collection of letters I saved would be very compromising to the other party so I will have to burn them at some point.

Did you never watch DALLAS or DYNASTY?  Blackmail, man, Blackmail!!!

[Rudynate]

On 2/21/2022 at 8:25 AM, Charlie said:

The recent post about answering the phone raised the observation that many people consider email an antiquated technology. I have been a prolific letter writer since my teens, and it has always been my primary means of communicating with friends and family. Often I didn't have a phone for personal calls--in college, living in other countries, traveling--but I could always write a letter and mail it. Non-local phone calls were also expensive, and required use of an intermediary like a long distance operator. The first time I lived in Europe, I brought a tape recorder with me, made cassette tapes, and mailed them back every week to my spouse in the US. When email became available at the end of the 20th century, I saw it as the perfect solution to my communication needs, especially for recipients at a distance. Now I use it even when I could use a phone, even for brief messages. Of course, many of my friends and family are also elderly, and don't like trying to text on a cell phone.

The main disadvantage to email is that I need more equipment that just a pen, a piece of paper and a stamp, or a working phone. Also, I can't get an immediate response the way I can with a phone call, and I don't even know if my communication has been received unless I get a reply, but that is equally true of snail mail. The clutter of spam/scam emails is a nuisance, but they are easy to recognize and ignore, and the number of spam texts is getting just as bad.

So, what is your attitude toward email? Have you abandoned it in favor of newer options?

 

It is still my main form of communication.  I'm texting more and more because I get faster responses, but email is still my mainstay. 

When I bought my first house, the first few months, I had to monitor every penny I  spent.  Cell phones were in their infancy and you still had to pay long distance charges on land lines.    To keep my long distance bill down, I started writing letters.  It was pleasant sitting down at my desk and dashing off a letter here and there to stay in touch with remote friends and family.

[Luv2play]

55 minutes ago, samhexum said:

Did you never watch DALLAS or DYNASTY?  Blackmail, man, Blackmail!!!

I never saw the episodes dealing with blackmail. Nor would it occur to me to ever resort to blackmail. Some secrets are best left being secret. Nothing to be gained stirring up old passions. But I know you were just joking.😅

[+ tassojunior]

for me, social media (mostly Messenger) messaging for friends; texts for business like repairmen etc or friends, email more for circle subscriptions or more business stuff I want a copy of saved. The amazing thing about email is it saves for many many years and is easy to search. But it's also an advertsing and spam PITA jungle now.

I have an older friend I taught to use computers years ago and she stays stuck on email. At least she's up with that (though she swears something's "broken her computer" every few days.) She calls a lot for an hour at a time. Another newer friend has a weird fascination with the telephone too and he's an IT. I use the phone a lot on speakerphone in the car to be more productive. That's it.  

 

 

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by tassojunior

[Luv2play]

I am the first to admit that I am not on the leading edge of digital record keeping. I imagine large organizations that digitize their records will have a lasting record of their history as long as electronic records are viable.

I do a lot of history research and of course the written record of centuries past is recorded on paper. Paper records are fragile too but if properly kept are readable centuries as and indeed millenia later.

Will digital documents be as enduring? I don't know and of course we don't have the ability to see what they will look like even a hundred years from now. We only have acouple of decades of experience.

Decades ago many historical written documents were microfilmed. We have these in our files but frankly they are hard to read, were often poorly done, and if there are parts that are illegible, you can't retrieve the info unless the original documents are still around. No-one is microfilming anymore.

So if your own personal files are digitized, what happens to them after you are gone?

[pubic_assistance]

Professionally E-mail is still the preferred form of communication for my business.

As mentioned above it's efficent in the way you can store, sort and search for messages. I try to engage clients through email for most agreements so there is no He said/ She said moments where someone remembers something that was agreed to differently.

In my office all business transactions are email while text is used for quick check-ins, questions and short discussions

[+ Charlie]

17 hours ago, Luv2play said:

I am the first to admit that I am not on the leading edge of digital record keeping. I imagine large organizations that digitize their records will have a lasting record of their history as long as electronic records are viable.

I do a lot of history research and of course the written record of centuries past is recorded on paper. Paper records are fragile too but if properly kept are readable centuries as and indeed millenia later.

Will digital documents be as enduring? I don't know and of course we don't have the ability to see what they will look like even a hundred years from now. We only have acouple of decades of experience.

Decades ago many historical written documents were microfilmed. We have these in our files but frankly they are hard to read, were often poorly done, and if there are parts that are illegible, you can't retrieve the info unless the original documents are still around. No-one is microfilming anymore.

So if your own personal files are digitized, what happens to them after you are gone?

The problem with all kinds of digital records is that they are useless without the appropriate technology of their time to view them, much of which becomes unavailable as they are superseded by newer technology and the older machinery ceases to be manufactured. I still have some of those cassette tapes that I sent to my spouse fifty years ago, but I no longer have a tape recorder on which to listen to them.

[samhexum]

8 minutes ago, Charlie said:

I still have some of those cassette tapes that I sent to my spouse fifty years ago, but I no longer have a tape recorder on which to listen to them.

Oh, dear!  So you won't be able to listen to Hair, Aquarias, & I got you, babe?  ☹️😭

[+ Charlie]

1 minute ago, samhexum said:

Oh, dear!  So you won't be able to listen to Hair, Aquarias, & I got you, babe?  ☹️😭

I have Hair on CDs, and still listen to it (I saw the original off-Broadway production).

[xyz48B]

I do so much email. Both on my computer and my phone.

As for spam, most of the snail mail I get is junk. The regular mail isn’t immune to spam.

[Luv2play]

1 hour ago, Charlie said:

I have Hair on CDs, and still listen to it (I saw the original off-Broadway production).

I saw the London production of Hair in 1969 but I think it was a year old by then. It was pretty racy for the time, with full frontal nudity (albeit fleeting).

[+ WilliamM]

2 hours ago, Charlie said:

I have Hair on CDs, and still listen to it (I saw the original off-Broadway production).

And I saw Ethel Merman in "Gypsy" on the day Oscar Hammerstein died.

[Hammerstein was one of the producers of " Annie Get Your Gun"]

[+ RJD]

23 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

Professionally E-mail is still the preferred form of communication for my business.

As mentioned above it's efficent in the way you can store, sort and search for messages. I try to engage clients through email for most agreements so there is no He said/ She said moments where someone remembers something that was agreed to differently.

In my office all business transactions are email while text is used for quick check-ins, questions and short discussions

Same here.  If there was a TV show for e-mail hoarding, I’d be on it.  The only e-mails I delete at work are out of office notifications and the few spam items which get through our firewall/. Everything else gets archived.  At my previous job, I was able to produce an e-mail string from five years earlier when someone accused us of mishandling their issue.  It’s called CYA.