As seen on Forbes.com (let’s see if they come after me for excerpting this) we have this wonderful piece from renowned primatologist Jane Goodall on the dangers of e-mail.
While I agree completely with Ms. Goodall, personally what bothers me about email is that it’s killing the art of letter writing. When you write an email, you tend to dash of a quick note/response, usually about a single subject. Gone is the process of thinking through what you want to say to someone, gone is the beauty of carefully choosing your words. Gone is sitting in the woods or by a lake or stream while sharing your thoughts will a friend or relative.
Anyway, here’s what Ms. Goodall has to say about email:
“I think e-mails are the most dangerous form of communication because people are wedded to the screen, they feel compelled to answer e-mails immediately, and they’re under huge pressures with the numbers of e-mails pouring in. Sometimes, e-mails come from people full of things you know they wouldn’t say on the telephone.
I was always taught as a child to never act in haste. We always were told “sleep on it, don’t be rash, don’t be hasty.” That’s gone away. I think there are forms of communication now, which make it much too easy for us to vent the feelings we have at the moment without thinking about them.
I remember when I worked for Lewis Leakey, first as his secretary. He was very impulsive. He’d get a letter in the mail, and he would open it, and it would be perhaps something from a scientist he thought was quite ridiculous. You could hear him muttering “Bosh! Rubbish!” The poor bit of paper would be scored with his marks, and he’d turn to me and say “Get so and so on the phone!” I got very wise to his moods, so I would pretend the number was engaged, or the man wasn’t there, and then an hour or two later, he was rational again. ”