Tuesday, July 16, 2024

THE BLACK HOLE OF EMAIL-VERSE

 

Email changed many things. The word mail shouldn’t be confused with the mail of yore.

 

For one, email is supposedly delivered in seconds. This means that not getting a reply for many days (think--more than ten) can feel like an insult, specifically with personal emails.

 

Email goes into the ether and, without a physical presence, depends on some form of acknowledgement of receipt. In personal email, this means a reply. In business, it can be an auto-receipt. Without either, it’s in the who-knows-if cloud.

 

The other day, my email program let me know two personal emails bounced for some technical reason. I re-sent them, and they didn’t get a “bounce” message the second time. Later, both friends asked me why I had sent twice, as they got it the first time.

 

At the mercy of this non-physical world, I could only mumble something about the bounce notifications having to do with some protocol/permissions that someone somewhere on the interwebs explained in terms neither I nor my friends understand.

 

Marvelous thing, this email business. But I confess I feel helpless sometimes when I can’t understand or imagine its path to my dear ones or the professionals I am dealing with.

 

The mystery of carrier pigeons is, at least, something the mind’s eye can envision. Ditto for physical mail.

 

But email remains a black hole. It swallows, and when it works, it spits out.


6 comments:

  1. It's not always instant though. Sometimes I will email my husband and I won't get a response. Then he'll come home and I'll say, "Did you get my email about such and such?" and he'll say no. He'll show me on his phone that there's no email. I will then show him on my phone that I sent it. Then suddenly bells will ring and it appears magically and the argument ends with a sigh and a grunt. lol Same thing happens with text messages. It's crazy!

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  2. I love email, even when it seems gremlins are in my computer.

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  3. Whatever the glitches, email remains a marvel. I remember when I used to be abroad and the one way I could connect with family and friends was by writing aerograms, something no one in the younger generations would even recognize. In those days, international phone calls were prohibitively expensive. That I can now communicate with friends around the world in seconds is nothing short of a miracle, so I don't mind putting up with the snags, bumps, and occasional failures.

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  4. I think email is great for business but not so much for personal contact. There's a huge generational gap where younger people (like my kids' generation) simply ignore them and use it only for business. They want a text, a Marco Polo or even a phone call but none of them respond much to emails. Perhaps it's like Facebook and now only for old people?

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  5. No one thinks you have to respond INSTANTLY, Evelyn. But no response to true friends personal emails for many days (to quote myself above) is telling of a wish to distance, unless there are other serious considerations going on.

    What Karen Jones Gowen said about younger folks no engaging via Email (it is a generational thing, I've learned) still holds in that they do respond within a few days to personal texts. When they don't, they themselves call it "ghosting." It's a passive-aggressive dismissal, or just plain bad manners.

    That's my take.

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  6. I greatly prefer email to the telephone. It's more convenient and less intrusive.

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