I’m very close to giving up personal email though. I get pretty easily overwhelmed by a full inbox and for interpersonal communication, it doesn’t work for me. I originally treated it as an electronic version of the letter, but its immediacy belies the fact that not everyone will respond to a letter the same way. E.g., if someone I haven’t heard from for a while contacts me (and they don’t live in the same city/province/country) and says they want to know how I’m doing, etc., but then never replies when I respond and ask how they are, etc., well, it feels rude and a waste of my time, regardless of whether it’s an email or a snail mail letter. I get that people are busy, but so am I and if I took the time to respond to a letter, then I kind of expect the person who initiated the contact to reply in kind. Even in brief. So at this point, if that happens with someone I know, I henceforth end contact or reply only very very briefly and don’t bother with the details.

I also have informed my friends/family that while I love to hear from them, I’m too busy for jokes and other garbage. With Facebook and other means of sharing stuff, that’s not as much of an issue for me anymore. I look at my Mom’s inbox when I help her with her email and it’s full of “Fwd:…” messages. I don’t have patience for it.

No to ignoring: If I’m getting a message, I LOOK AT IT. Why? I don’t want the stress of missing something. Plus, I work hard to make sure that if it’s coming to me, it’s important. Other than spam, you should be able to control this. CC’s from colleagues? Ask them to stop. Cute puppy pictures from mom? Ditto.

Yes to emptying: Again, a stress issue – what’s there waiting to cause a problem? Also, letting crap pile up (paper too) is a slippery slop to the “pile, not file” trap.

-Aaron

Another good point made earlier was that difficulties arise in the asymmetry. As long as everyone has the same expectations — whether about responsiveness or anything else — it works fine. But when an immune person and a not-so-immune person interact, there can be problems.

What really kills me is when people we know get their first computer and internet access, they invariably get that stupid “Hi, I’m Bill Gates, and I’m testing an email tracking program. I’ll give you $1000 for every person you forward this to” email and have to forward it to EVERYBODY they know. Then I have to go to snopes, find the link, and find a way to gently let them know that this has been going around for more than a decade, there’s no way to track email, and you’re just being greedy and annoying without hurting their feelings.

I had this discussion with my wife last week. She feels email should be personal and not the study in brevity that I use it as. I feel like it does me little good, so I treat it as such.

My main beef with email is the lack of context and threading of conversations. Gmail has changed the conversation threading and that is great. I like the context that Facebook walls and Twitter streams provide. This is also why I don’t have philosophical discussions over IM. :)