[P2P-F] Fwd: Death of Email has been Severely Exaggerated - Summation

Thu May 19 02:31:19 CEST 2011

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Auren Hoffman Summation <auren at summation.net>

> It is alive! The Death of Email Has Been Severely Exaggerated

> The power of email is that it is asynchronous (the recipient can read it whenever they want), it can be personalized to the user (unlike a Twitter post where everyone reads the same message), it is inexpensive to send (unlike direct mail), free to receive (unlike SMS), it is very trackable, and it is easy to access for almost every American with a wallet.
>

I agree.  I think preference for email has more to do with the nature
of the task, and the personality type of the user, than with
generation.

For me, the apogee of communications media--aside from limited
task-oriented use of social media--are the landline phone with
answering machine and old-fashioned email.

I hate cell phones, and I hate the idea of having to interrupt what
I'm doing to respond to a text every  time the damn thing buzzes about
as much as I hate the idea of having to interrupt what I'm doing to
answer a phone call.  The same thing applies to an IM bugging you
while you're trying to work on something.

The thing I love about email is that it's a non-realtime medium,  so
you can answer it whenever it's convenient,  and organize your
thoughts.  And you can do so without the space constraints or cost of
a text.

If I could install an answering machine on my doorbell, I would.

--
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
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Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html