PROSConvenience - Especially in the business world, you are not usually in the same place as the person with whom you wish to communicate. E-mail is a time-saving and generally less expensive way for people to exchange information.
Allows Asynchrony - Unlike attending board meetings and conventions, each person can decide when, where and how much time they will spend dealing with the information they receive.
CONSOverload of Information - Because it is the sender who controls who are the recipients of the information, receivers are subject to an inbox full of junk mail and irrelevant information (i.e. "Fwd to all" function).
Loss of Social Skills - Relying on e-mail as a primary form of communication decreases one's ability and number of opportunities to converse face to face with others. As a result, they are not given the chance to develop social skill or become comfortable in social situations.
Loss of Context - Through reading and literary communication, important elements of oral communication (such as tone and body language) are lost. By its very nature, written information becomes fragmented and detached from its original context.
What now?
Once the basic pros and cons are identified, the questions begin to roll:
- To what extent to the pros weigh out the cons (or vice versa)?
- Overall, is e-mail beneficial to society? Or does it simply act to distance us from each other?
- Why, in a world with the capacity for instant video and satellite conferencing, do we still rely on/choose to communicate via e-mail and text-messaging?
- To what extent should human relations be compromised for efficiency and convenience of communication?
2 comments:
Part of me wants to say I like emailing and the other part wants to avoid it as much as I can. I guess this is where I have to personally decide whether the pros outweigh the cons.
To start off I will discuss the cons of emailing. To me it is another excuse for us to avoid face to face communication with people. I guess for some people this is a benefit and for others it is not. Even if people are in the same building for work they are still using email's to converse with each other. I guess this is ok if you do not want to waste paper but printing off each draft of your document for your boss to look over but at the same time you are missing out on the facial expressions from them as they are reading it. It is in the facial expressions that tells all about the quality of the document you have just spent hours on.
So talking about Pros vs. Cons outweighing each other in my opinion I would have to say emailing would have to be a good thing. I use it everyday. I use emails to talk to my boss, co-workers, soccer coach, instructors,and friends and family who are in other places in the world.
I find emailing less expensive then talking on the phone with my family in California. We can send as many emails as we want including pictures for FREE. Where as when I talk to them on the phone it is costing like 7 cents a minute. I know money shouldn't really matter when you are talking to your family but when the convience of free emailing is available thats what I choose. OF course I would much rather be there in person with my family but I cannot be in two places at once. Ok so far the only emailing issue that I feel is important to me is the face to face communication with others. This to me is a very important issue. I know I do find emailing to benefit me in my day to day life but in the long run it doesn't. I just don't have to time to sit down and write a letter and gather some pictures to send to my family, or print out each draft to give to my boss. The truth is if I had the time to do all the things like this I would do it. I would rather sit down with my boss and go over a document together, or see my family inperson. So unless someone is ONLY relying on emailing for communication I think overall it is a benefit to society.
If you were a person who was lost somewhere in the world all by yourself, with only your computer (with wireless internet & a battery which lasted forever)and this was your only form of communication with your friends and family How long would you survive?
Emailing is a convience which we use to our advantage we could survive without it and we can't survive with ONLY it.
Again, I completely agree with you; e-mail is an extremely convenient technology, and I think it is for that reason why we are so drawn to it. I also share your concern that, nowadays, people don’t feel as much need and desire for face to face conversation – the general thought is, “as long as they know what I need to tell them, it doesn’t matter how I do it.”
As with most everything in our world, I believe (like you) that the solution lies in moderation; relying too much or too little on one thing creates imbalances. Therefore, using e-mail selectively – sending those drafts to your boss, or keeping in touch with relatives in Cali – instead of using it to communicate with everyone at everytime, will help even out those imbalances. However, just for kicks, I’ve been trying to look at this situation from different perspectives and have begun to realize… moderation is only part of the solution if we want the world to promote the values you and I share today.
One point I found interesting was that you mentioned you often rely on e-mail because you do not always have time to sit down and write a letter to your relatives. I know I may be going a little off topic, but I couldn’t help but wonder…why is sending letters and photos through the mail seen as much more personal than sending an e-mail? In my eyes…they are virtually the same thing (only one is a little slower and more expensive). You are still conversing through text…still unable to physically see the recipient… still unable to read any visual or tonal cues from the sender…yet, to most people (myself included) watching a letter pop through the mail slot is a lot more gratifying than seeing a big blue (1) pop up in your inbox. I’ve concluded that this is probably a result of our values and upbringing. For instance, though the world was amidst its e-revolution when I was born, my parents, didn’t subscribe to an internet provider until about ’93. As such, I was brought up hand-writing letters to my cousin in Toronto (instead of e-mailing)…and sending Christmas cards through the post (instead of e-cards). It wasn’t until about 6th grade when I got my own e-mail account…and it wasn’t until 8th grade when I started using it on a regular basis. Since then, I’ve viewed receiving letters through the mail as much more meaningful… because it’s what I was used to. To students only a few years younger than me, however… a lot of them have been brought up with e-mail (and now even things like Facebook)…and I’ve noticed they don’t view the stamped and sealed letters (that we find so meaningful) as, in fact, meaningful. To them, rather, they are old fashioned and inconvenient.
So…I guess what I’ve realized is, yes, we are relying more and more on e-mail for communication, and using it too much has its negative affects on our relationships and social lives…but maybe we only see it this way because it’s different than what we’re used to? 21st century generations are being brought up around all this technology…and, as a result, e-mail has increasingly become an expected and socially accepted form of personal communication. In turn, these people might even argue that using e-mail on a day to day basis only increases the meaning of face to face meetings, when they actually do occur. Strange, I know…but true?
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