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

[Lee Corbin]

Eugen wrote

> Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 3:16 AM
> 
> 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.

and MB testified (Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 5:36 AM)

> I watched a young woman lose her job in two days over this!
> She did hardly anything but text-message. And it was, eventually,
> noticed. Even the person who had helped her get the job was disgusted.

I wish I knew how important this is. A mitigating factor is that
what happens to *most* young people doesn't matter. What matters
is what the small percent (dare I say "elite"?) do.

Somehow I doubt that the better college students are performing
any worse in terms of writing skills than before. That is, probably
even the most avid of the text-messagers manage to compartmentalize
the behavior.

Frankly, I have some doubt about Eugen's contention that "Email does
horrors to your ability to maintain focus and build cohesive narratives".
It probably has more of an effect on one's *desire* to write anything
substantial than on one's skill.

This does bring up the perennial question of what really matters and
what does not regarding the entire development of society and
civilization. The more you get out into the world, the more you
realize how much is going on about which you have no clue. Twenty
years before the web, I lived in a town of just 100,000, and 
everything that came from the larger world was effectively filtered
through books, newspapers, and TV. Millions of on-line communities
and our greatly expanded social exchanges did not exist, or at
least did not exist outside the big cities.

Lee