The Dual-Edged Sword of Email

I'm certain I'm not alone among my readers, but I spend an insane, inordinate amount of time on email. Keeping up with friends, of course, but also academic listserves, which proliferate seemingly daily, and news sources -- newspapers and magazines and journals -- and too many sports-related emails to mention. Much of my daily contact with Africa comes to me via email. Email that by any definition is work-related. There are days, it seems, when "work" consists entirely of deleting email, responding to email, ignoring email, blogging based on things I receive via email, and engaging in endeavors and making the sort of inquiries that will lead to more email. A day away from the computer can set me back two days. A week away from email and I cannot imagine how I would dig myself out.

Now we have confirmation that we are not alone from the website of the respected literary magazine-cum-journal N+1, which explicitly makes the case"Against Email." Here is a sample, though the whole thing is worthwhile:

America, most efficient country on earth, is in fact a nightmare economy of squandered time. Our economic system condemns people to work in offices and send email; that’s what they do there. (And in order to cover their asses, they cc everyone about everything.) Then they go home and take with them all the work they were supposed to be doing all day. Their revenge upon those of us who don’t work in offices? To send us email from nine to five.

We too have sometimes been the have-nots in the email economy. In the role of supplicant emailer, we have labored to achieve the impossible right tone: so winning that others will have to write back, so casual you can pretend it doesn’t matter when they don’t. The whole thing is painful all around. And this, finally, is what must be understood: email, which presents itself as a convenience, a breeze, is in fact a stern disciplinary phenomenon. You must not stray too far from your desk. You must be polite, you must write back soon. And yet in order to strike the right note, you must not write when too giddy, angry, tired, or drunk. Always at the disposal of email, never, except guiltily, at the disposal of your moods. . . . It fits our phase of capitalism: the collective attitude is casual, natural-seeming, offhand; the discipline is constant and intense.

Email represents a form of self-inflicted tyranny, but it is tyranny nonetheless. But I have to cut this short. I have to check if I have any new messages before I go to bed.