KEY POINTS:
The other day I emailed a colleague while I was actually talking to her. It just seemed easier.
People warn me email and texting and cyber communication is addictive and I say tish and pish to them.
Of course it's addictive but so's eating, so's breathing, addiction doesn't have to be a bad thing it can be something we need to keep doing to survive.
Email and cyber communication isn't just part of my life, it's as central to my life as - well, anything. It makes everything easier: work, socialising, relationships. Email free days? You might as well try to manage without using verbs or ban the colour green. You could do it but why would you want to?
Email reminds me that I am not alone in the world, but a connected part of something bigger and more meaningful. Email means we communicate more and with more people, people we would have once lost touch with, someone we met on a train in Turkey, say, or flatmates from the late 90s.
Some of that communication is admittedly meaningless or annoying - like those emails people send to you copying in your boss just to cover their own droopy arse, or the "see ya!", "cool!", "no worries" or (worst of all) "tkx xoxo :)". But then plenty of real-life conversation is annoying and pointless too.
After all, talking about house prices or CSI at the watercooler doesn't actually contribute anything to the sum of human knowledge.
Those conversations - like those emails - are just about connecting with other people and creating shared references and experiences. And emails can be meaningful, very meaningful, both professionally and in your private life.
Without email my career would be entirely different, not just in the day-to-day but in a wider sense.
I've been offered jobs via email quite a few times, including this one. And it can have meaning personally too.
Someone even once told me he loved me via email - not unusual these days I suppose, but it was the first time he'd told me that. I saved that email for ages (although it had to go eventually, you know, limited bandwidth).
Some people whom I am not friends with, even on Facebook, say that emailing and instant messaging and looking at yourself on Google takes up time, time that could be spent "really" socialising with "real" people. But what they are too dial-up to even realise is that socialising online is real socialising. It's better.
The cyber-me isn't the real me, but that's because she's a better version of me, funnier, less moody. We should talk less and email more: email is quicker and easier, as immediate as speech without having to co-ordinate being in the same place, much more controllable.
- Jo McCarrol
