The first link below takes you to a book review by Ben Yagoda of a book by John Freeman entitled, The Tyranny of E-Mail: The Four Thousand Year Journey to Your Inbox. Yagoda sees at least one important contribution email has made to human communication: brevity. “E-mail in particular and online writing in general have their well-known flaws and limitations, but they have also served as cleansing agents for prose, much as journalistic writing did early in the 20th century. That is, while they may disinhibit [sic] inappropriate declarations, they also inhibit dull, abstract wordiness.”
JamesW.
Ceaseris Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at theUniversity of Virginia. In this entry from the blog site of First Things, he wonders about the form and protocol we assign to email communication: “An email message is not like a telephone call without an answering machine. It has arrived and there is no denying it. It is like a letter, but how often would a student in the past have sent a letter, which imposed the costs of paper, thought, envelope, a stamp, and a trip to the mailbox? For the students today, the matter is all but settled: incline your ear and answer me speedily in the day that I write.”
Ceasar's reflection is found here:
www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2010/02/16/form-and-substance/.