Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 313.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2023-11-16 08:22:24+00:00
        From:  <mail@gabrielegan.com>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.310: why e-mail, why not social media

Dear Humanists

Two relevant points I haven't seen mentioned
about email:

1) Email is easily archived. The data
format of email is a well-defined open
standard and a large number of computer
programs are able to manage this format.
It is entirely feasible for an individual
to maintain a record of all her communications.
I have the 456,000 emails I've sent or received
since the beginning of the millenium and a
well-written email client (I use Thunderbird)
has no trouble storing, indexing, and retrieving
them by a search for words inside the email.
This is invaluable as a tool for supporting
research and maintaining networks of contacts.

2) Email is inherently a 'pull' medium in which
I get information when I want it, not a 'push'
medium in which I get information when the
sender wants me to. This aids productivity
in avoiding the breaking of concentration by
a machine beeping at me. Admittedly, the
transition from the POP3 to the IMAP protocol
has made this principle harder to maintain.
A lot of colleagues' email clients are set
up to beep whenever someone sends them an email,
which is intrusive and undesirable. When they
ask me, I show them how to change the settings
so that they get their email only 'on demand'
when they feel like dealing with it.

Regards

Gabriel


________________________________________________________________________
Professor Gabriel Egan, De Montfort University. www.gabrielegan.com
Director of the Centre for Textual Studies http://cts.dmu.ac.uk
Teaching award: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/ntfs/professor-gabriel-egan
New Oxford Shakespeare https://www.oxfordscholarlyeditions.com/nos


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