Back of the Envelope

This may seem like a simple, self-focused Wired opinion piece, but it's important:

The e-mail generated by that essay [on whether it's e-mail or email] was overwhelming. It split about 50-50 for and against, and the tone swung dramatically, too, from adulatory to just plain snarky. I remember one in particular: "Why is it," wondered the writer, "that copy editors are always the most long-winded sons of bitches in any organization?" My reply to him (and I replied to as many as I could) was direct: "Because we're paid to be. That's why."

The following morning there was an apologetic response from him waiting in my mail queue. He was chastened, not because I wasn't a long-winded SOB on this occasion, but because I had answered him, one human being to another. He hadn't expected that. He thought he was writing into the ether. By answering him, I was no longer a faceless wall of sound. For him, at least, I now lived and breathed.

We enjoyed some clever banter until each of us gradually wearied of it and drifted off to other things, but it hammered home a lesson I've never forgotten: In a world where technology theoretically binds us closer together, it's more important than ever to really talk with the other person.

Although technically, e-mail (with or without a hyphen) and its even faster cousins, IM and text messaging, make communicating across time and distance a breeze, it's still the quality of the communication that counts. In the case of my irritable reader, our e-mail hookup worked because both of us were willing to make it work.

This I agree with whole-heartedly. It's way too easy to take the person on the other end of an e-mail or online conversation as an anonymous nobody, and that's unhealthy. The author goes on from there, and I haven't had a chance to digest the rest and decide whether I agree or not, but remember in the next flamewar that the person on the other end is a real human person.

Update: I changed the title to more accurately reflect the content.