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It is common knowledge that work environments changed drastically when we connected the user to the internet. Not only that, but we were able to create a mobile office and connect our leisurely existence to the same always pulsating never ending source of information. Another drastic step happened when we started migrating our social networks to the world of avatars, creating more and more tightly connected virtual communities through which our social status is measured.
Now what is most interesting is observing how we interact with these three main channels of information emersion, the browser, the inbox, and the array of IM descendants.
Have you installed shit load of stuff into your browser so it blinks every time your status at one of the other brain extensions you use changes? Feed alerts mailbox stats daily news?
Do you use multiple tabs in your browser, so you can see when your Facebook chat goes “plop” or have you already integrated Skype and all of your other IMs with it into Pidgin?
Do you take time while reading your emails or doing whatever to answer Aardvark’s questions in your gtalk or do you like your Gmail intact and rather do it over your smart phone?
Are you still a dinosaur using twitter by actually going to the web page? Dude, you’re way behind time.
Do you Foursquare? Have you noticed yourself coming into a restaurant or bar with friends and lapsing out of the conversation for a couple of seconds so you can check into the new venue?
And why do you do it?
It’s easier, saves time, makes you feel on top of stuff, gives you a kick ‘cause you’re getting’ hooked to all that noise, to the “being there” and ”being a hub”. Your mailbox occasionally rewards you with “Congratulations! Your inbox status is zero.” But c’mon how often is it really?
For each email you send out, three more come in. One is probably relevant; the rest is self inflicted spam. You want to get news and pr from all of your points of interest and you want your daily updates as to what’s up today, where you should spend your afternoon, and what’s hip for tonight. You’re out there only to absorb the world like a magic sponge.
Now, every now and then something happens to make you wonder where the magic has gone. My niece is starting to learn how to read and write. She’s still doing all caps, but making significant progress in her attitude towards the learning tasks ever since her parents introduced a sense of purpose to them. While reluctant to read good night stories, she seems to be rather happy to lead email correspondence with all family members. The letters are short (4-5 sentences) and encourage her to learn new words as well as empower her to use online resources, such as embedded links, pictures etc. (all things Zemanta to put it shortly ). She answers her emails regularly and is using basic letter etiquette and we all try to follow her lead in this.
What struck me as extremely odd was her last email to me today. It read more or less:
SORRY CAN’T NOW GOING TO THE DENTIST.
LENA
That’s it. A one-liner with no address! A formal change due to experiencing extreme pressure of having both no time to write and having a sense of a communicational must.
How many times have I seen this form before… We all use it. I try to use it less and less.
And please do not misunderstand, I have nothing against one-liners, heck I’m all for putting them in the subject line altogether and ending the subject line with “//end “ at the end of message to save the time lost at actually opening the empty email. But c’mon what we can see from the above mentioned example is a nice illustration of one basic rule of communication today.
Emails ARE way to cheap today.
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