The Tyranny of E-mail (27 page)

Authors: John Freeman

If you have been having trouble sleeping, it’s possible you might gradually feel your body slow down at last. The person who has been sitting next to you on the couch might sharpen in focus; stresses at your job could begin to seem less like Armageddon and more like something happening
over there
. That cluster of what-ifs and niggling doubts that is occluded by work and
the pace of your schedule might slide back into view. Maybe you will finally go back to French lessons, read the newspaper; maybe you can make it home in time to watch your daughter’s soccer game. You might begin to think of the people in your life who aren’t always in touch via e-mail, wonder how they’re doing.

This awareness—this presence in the moment—is what gives us the power to act and make decisions, to shape our own lives and truly touch other people. Life might change in the blink of an eye, as the cliché goes, but we also take part in that change and steer it by living purposefully. Of all the things e-mail overload robs from us—be it the pleasure of our work, the strength of our eyes, or even the relationships that flame out through its lack of social cues—this is the most severe. Watching the abuse of e-mail start to choke this mindfulness out of friends and coworkers, strangers on the street, I realized that this is not simply an issue for efficiency experts but a serious epistemological concern for our society. It is affecting our capacity to know one another and the world, to listen. It’s grave enough that if we allow it to continue unchecked, we will have nothing worth sending—a terrible loss. Worst of all, if these past few years are any gauge, that won’t stop e-mail from arriving, either.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not exist were it not for the gentle, congenial presence of Colin Robinson, who drew the topic out of me over lunch, thereby proving that face-to-face meetings can be vastly more productive than e-mail ping-pong. His wit and encouragement and sharp edits greatly improved the writing, and I will be forever grateful to him for leading me to believe I could even write a book in the first place.

A work of nonfiction always rests upon the work of writers who have come before, and my debts in this case are substantial. I am not a neuroscientist or computer specialist, but the science and technology reporters of
The New York Times
, whose work I quote and refer to throughout the book, dating back to the nineteenth century, and particularly Katie Hafner, were illuminating and pointed me in many fruitful directions.

Early on in the writing of this book, conversations with Lawrence Joseph clarified my thinking, and I am grateful to him for his synthetic intelligence and for pointing me to Stephen Kern’s tremendous
The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918
. I was also motivated early on by the work of Tom Standage, Clark
Blaise, Naomi S. Baron, and Don Paterson. I was particularly moved by Ayse and Yasar Kemal, who reminded me of the sensuous purpose of creating an artifact.

I am grateful to Scribner for having such a committed team of optimists standing behind a first book. Thank you to Susan Moldow and Nan Graham for their friendship, good company, and determination to get this right. Brant Rumble has been as patient and steady-handed an editor as I could ever hope for, and I am very grateful for his stewardship. Thank you as well to Kate Bittman for humor and belief.

Thank you, Sarah Burnes, for seeing the potential in this book and for encouraging me to take the long view, for being so constantly unflappable, and for chipping in at all the right moments. Thank you, too, Alison Cohen, Stephanie Cabot, and David Gernert. In London I would take to the field with Arabella and Abner Stein any day.

Thank you to Sigrid Rausing and Eric Abraham for generously giving me time out of the office to publish this book, and thank you to the staff of
Granta
magazine, in particular Ellah Allfrey, Liz Jobey, Simon Willis, Roy Robins, Patrick Ryan, and Emily Greenhouse, for putting up with my absence.

Thank you, Richard and Raine Hermsdorf, for storing my library all those years and keeping my office free; Leslie, for getting me to quit.

I perhaps may never have written this book were it not for the love and support of my family; my father, who spent a good part of ten years following me around the streets of Carmichael with a car full of newspapers, showing me how not to quit. Thank you, Andy, for good cheer and your example; to Tim for strength and brilliance; and especially my mother, whom I dearly wish could read this and know it is for her.

Finally, I have to thank the biggest e-mail crank of them all, this book’s muse and sternest devotee, who has embraced earnestness in the face of Englishness, and disorder to a point. I am working on the latter. In the meantime, for you I am most grateful of all.

INDEX

addiction to e-mail,
16
,
133
,
134-39
,
165

address,
24-25
,
29-30
,
92
,
143-44
,
146
,
147

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA),
11
,
91
,
132

advertising,
11-12
,
55-58
,
94
,
168
,
174
.
See also
spam

American colonies,
29-30
,
31
,
33
,
35

“Americanitis,”
78

ancient civilizations, mail in,
24-28

anonymity,
49-50
,
146
,
150
,
151

anxiety,
19-20
,
76-80
,
133

AOL (America Online),
101
,
124
,
125
,
126
,
135

ARPANET,
86-92
,
118
,
120
,
121
,
132
,
186