[Namron] Communication

[Ulf Gunnarsson]

Radei Drchevich wrote:
> May I ask a serious question.  Why does everyone make communication so
> difficult?  Why not use the media available to thier fullest?

You've heard a few reasons.  I would add my favorite.  Email is
effectively a quarter of a century old. (It's a little older, but that
sounds better.)  Most people have only been using it since the World
Wide Web explosion in the mid 1990's.  Many of the people on this list
started emailing after that and are only casual users at best.

All this means that it is *our* current generation developing email
etiquette.  Our parents did not teach us this, and neither did our
school teachers.  We have only one another to look at for example.

Bad manners precede good, and most people here understand the terms
"flame war" and "net rage".  The mailing lists allow the careful
deliberation of written and the near-instant speed of a telephone call.
This is a powerful marriage, but has drawbacks.  Have you ever been in a
multi-storied schoolhouse or mall and seen a kid on one level yell an
insult to some bully on another level, knowing he can run away before
the bully can reach him?

So some of the posters on this list, or rather, the people on this list,
try to reread their emails before sending in order to make sure the
email says what they intended and would be hard to misinterpret.  When
posting, they remember that while some people are veteran users of
email, some are still intimidated by computers in general, let alone
electronic mail.  They remember that words sent here are practically
written with a permanent marker on the side of their house, visible for
decades to anyone who simple drives past.  In short, they think before
they post.

I would not say this makes communication more difficult.  It actually
helps with communication by cutting down on the number of ripple
messages any one post generates.  I agree that it slows down some
avenues of communication, limiting them from their full speed.  But I
also think that the speed-limiting governors placed on American
automobiles have kept many people from killing one another on public
highways, and I see this as a good analogy.

Finally, I'll throw in a second reason.  Mailing lists have become a
good place to harvest information that some folks do not want
distributed.  In fairness to them folks generally do not post that type
of information.  It means we still do some things by paper, but I feel
it is a good trade off.

Baron Ulf