The name E-mail, or 'Electronic mail' speaks for itself; messages sent electronically, through the internet. E-mails are usually sent/recieved instantly, or at least fairly quickly, and have developed to allow the attachment of a variety of different file types from word processed documents to pictures, video and music. Messages can be sent out to many contacts who the sender has pre-arranged into 'groups' (such as family, or work colleages), or to any collection of contacts chosen individually. Junk mail filters and automatic mail sorters are further of the more complex funtions of e-mail. Email has recently become a widely accepted form of communication for not only casual but also more formal communication within the academic and business world.
When I started using e-mail in around 1996 it was simply a fun way to make contact with friends and family, but has since become a highly crucial means of communication in many aspects of my life; a free and fast way to contact family, friends around the world, tutors, sending job applications and to recieve automatic alerts for a variety of things. I think this is not just a result of my growing up but a reflection of the growth of email in Western society in general. My life, and presumably many others, would be far less easy and convenient without the use of e-mail.
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Do you feel that social networking will take over from email? as mentioned in many other people's blogs?
ReplyDeleteYeah it's a good point; social networking has most of the benefits of email (apart from attachments etc, which i'm sure it will do one day) And more...photo's, personal info etc etc...i don't need to explain to you all the benefits of SNS's, i'm sure!
ReplyDeleteI personally wouldn't feel very comfortable with my employers etc seeing all that stuff; the problems with employers, the law, schools/uni's seeing info on facebook is made clear over and over with people getting in varying degrees of trouble for things said/done on SNS's. Perhaps as Facebook and others grow, they might embed some kind of email system seperate to your profile, which would make sense as so many people use them already; elliemcdougal@facebook.com...! But I can think of some reasons (above) why i think they are unlikely to takeover as they stand at the moment.
I agree, I've heard about prospective employers looking at your facebook to see what you're "really" like, but I'd prefer to keep my personal social networking and my business social networking very seperate.
ReplyDeleteYes possibily it would be more efficient to keep them on the same site but even so, IRL people have different personas at work to when they're with their friends which is usually more professional and serious, so if your online life were to reflect this surely it would make more sense to keep work matters and personal matters seperate to a degree. That's at least how I'd prefer it.
Good thread everybody.
ReplyDeleteI think this issue of "who are we?" will crop up again and again. IRL we have several 'personas' and we slip in and out of them easily. Some people say we are different selves in different contexts (I'm not sure. I think I want to keep 'selves' for something a bit deeper and fuller than that.) Cyberspace presents many different contexts to our desk/laptop -and possibly with many windows open we may swap personas back and forth in a dizzying manner?
So, do I want to use the same communication channel for everything and every persona? NO! I want to tailor my comms tool to my purpose and Facebook doesn't do much for me. In the future, I might use SMS, Skype, Twitter, as well as blogging, Facebook, e-mail etc. Indeed, I'd be surprised if we all don't get quite sophisticated in what channel suits what purpose. Why might I still write & post a letter do you think?