🚀 go-pugleaf

Yes, I believe e-mail is creating a new middle earth (good phrase Charles)
between speaking and writing.  It seems to be writing because you sit in
front of a computer and compose.  But it is, like speach, uneditable (unless
composed ahead of time and then transferred to e-mail mode).  Unlike speech
it contains none of the wide variety of non-verbal cues we use to make
meaning.   The absence of word wrap makes sentences shorter than most
other written sentences, but probably longer than the average spoken
sentence.  It also has a much more urgent sense of immediacy because you
are less likely to let it sit around for contemplation and "proper"
editing.  (Although many people do seem to do this and send out what
appear to be much more finished products in the e-mail mode.)  On some
conference networks there is a real sense of a conversation takeing
place with exceedingly brief postings and lots of response.  One of
the strangest things about it, I think, is that it tends to give a
peculiar sense of interpersonal communication, while, in most cases,
conference (hotline, or whatever you call it) participants do not all
know each other.  Some don't know *anybody* on the network personally.
But after a time of writing back and forth participants feel as though
they really do know each other.

It allows interpersonal relationships without ever having to actually
talk to one another.  Response time can be whatever you want it to be
-- you are not bound to reply right away as in a conversation.  But
once you have participated regularly people come to expect your input,
even if they don't know you.  And you can lurk in the background, saying
nothing, for months.  A sort of odd electronic voyeurism.

Essentially e-mail is an entirely new animal.  It isn't writing.  Neither
is it speech.  A whole different sent of social protocols govern it, and
they are not yet worked out.

--stephanie gibson