We mark time differently today than we did in the days when Thomas Jefferson waited months to receive reports of Lewis and Clark’s expedition west of the Mississippi. When the distance between neighbors is measured not in how many days travel or how long it takes to walk next door, but instead by how many times the telephone rings before a recording answers, we lose the inclination to compose correspondence by hand. If there is a downside to modern technology and the computer age, it is that it has generated a society whose values are defined by, if anything, expectations of instant response and immediate gratification. And yet, the Internet and email may actually help revive a dying discipline — the art of correspondence. In the span of four months, the authors exchanged nearly three hundred emails, and more than two hundred found their way here.
Before the Internet, the typewriter and word processor still required the writer to draft, edit, print, address envelopes, and go to the mailbox or post office in order to deliver a letter. Today, that is still too much trouble. By producing a hybrid between correspondence and conversation, the Internet and email fill the demand for immediacy we insist upon from modern technology. Rather than print out a letter, address an envelope and go to the mailbox, Frank simply hits the “Send” button, and his reply is on its way.
As if instantaneous transmission were not enough, the Internet employs its own shorthand of common idioms, for example:
BTW — by the way
FWIW — for what it’s worth
IMO — in my opinion
IMHO — in my humble opinion
POV — point of view.
Still, the Internet and email are far from a perfect medium and not without serious limitations as a means to communicate. The velocity with which we can fire off an email missive sometimes has unintended consequences for the careless or quick-tempered correspondent who might otherwise have time to reflect and retrieve a bilious rejoinder from the mailbox before the postman arrives.
And the written word alone provides no visual or auditory cues, no facial expression or vocal inflection, to supplement meaning or provide context. Enter “emoticons,” that the reader views by turning his or her head to the left. There are many different emoticons, but here are the most commonly employed throughout Rob and Frank's email exchange:
:-) — smiling face
;-) — smiling face, winking
:-( — frown
:-o — surprise
;-\ — smirk.
Finally, because the Internet was originally designed for people to communicate across computing platforms or operating systems and without regard to what word processing or mail program they have installed, to emphasize a word that, in print, would be underlined or italicized, the writers sometimes use CAPITAL letters, *asterisks.* or _underlining_.
And so, FWIW, THAT is as much introduction to Internet email conventions as the uninitiated reader *should* require. BTW, while the authors disagree on _many_ things, they both have little doubt that if Jefferson were alive today, his wife would be a computer widow. ;-)
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