[extropy-chat] Email is for the old folk now

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Aug 01, 2006 at 09:55:51AM +0100, BillK wrote:
> <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13921601/wid/11915829/>
> 
> E-mail losing ground to IM, text messaging
> Young people driving switch to instant gratification communication

It does neatly fit with the observed decline of communication 
skills. Email already does horrors to your ability to maintain
focus and build cohesive narratives more than a couple paragraphs 
long, and IM and SMS just completely destroys verbal skills.
 
> E-mail is so last millennium. Young people see it as a good way to
> reach an elder — a parent, teacher or a boss — or to receive an
> attached file. But increasingly, the former darling of high-tech
> communication is losing favor to instant and text messaging, and to
> the chatter generated on blogs and social networking sites such as
> Facebook and MySpace.
> 
> The shift is starting to creep into workplace communication, too.
> 
> Much like home postal boxes have become receptacles for junk mail,
> bills and the occasional greeting card, electronic mailboxes have
> become cluttered with spam. That makes them a pain to weed through,
> and the problem is only expected to worsen as some e-mail providers
> allow online marketers to bypass spam filters for a fee.
> 
> Beyond that, e-mail has become most associated with school and work.

Oh, how absolutely dreadful. School! Work! Why bother, if we can
have fun on WoW or SecondLife? Inability to hold a steady job?
Look -- a bright and shiny object! Neat! ...what were you saying? 

> "It used to be just fun," says Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate who
> studies social media at the University of California, Berkeley. "Now
> it's about parents and authority."
> 
> It means that many people often don't respond to e-mails unless they have to.
> 
> Boyd's own Web page carries this note: "please note that i'm months
> behind on e-mail and i may not respond in a timely manner." She, too,
> is more easily reached with the "ping" of an instant message.

Have you ever tried working when the damned "ping" would interrupt you
every half a minute? But hey, it's only work, right? That boring thing,
with authorities one has to report to? Fuck that, let's go play WoW.
 
> "And there is a very strong sense that the migration away from e-mail
> continues," says Lee Rainie, the director at Pew.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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