ran into this in the mail at NYTimes today,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/opinion/l23educ.html referring to a piece they had run the day before
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/education/21professors.html
about how US students were getting much more informal, personal, and even pushy and insolent, with their professors through the use of e-mail
a classic,
one student e-mailed prof and asked: Couldn't make class today; did I miss anything?
Imagine the answer: No no, same old same old!
which prompted this letter:
To the Editor:
Hey NYT — tx for that fab article on students pestering profs w/a gazillion e-mails! I need it for a class I'm teaching, like, tomorrow, but I lost my copy Could you send it to me ASAP?
ps — no PDF files, pls!
Jeremy Varon
Madison, N.J., The writer is an assistant professor of history at Drew University.
.....
But if e-mail makes it easier and less formal to contact people, has it not also lost any intial panache it had, to become a chore for the office grunt?
I know that my office is absolutely bombarded every single day with dozens (and dozens) of e-mails, and a week's absence means spending a morning digging out from under. A month's holiday means Avalanche!
by contrast, I read somewhere that Condoleezza Rice reads no e-mail. Why should she? Papers and presentations are made directly to her. Everyone answers her calls.
E-mail is for the grunts. But at the same time, it offers a false sense of assured contact with anyone anywhere. A bit of both?
It's at times like this we really miss a McLuhan.
.
[ 23 February 2006: Message edited by: Geneva ]