On the Efficiency of E-Mail

Thought: How well does e-mail improve time efficiency, communication, and collaboration over the previously used mail, phone, and meetings?


In e-mail's defence, it has helped increase the number of the average person's regular contacts. However, it has had an adverse effect on the quality of relationships. It is so easy to keep a friendship going on 30 seconds a week, while this was not the case in the earlier mail era. However, this has cheapened long-distance friendships. They used to be something rare and valuable, and one knew that the friend truly cared about them, because of the effort required.
In e-mail's defence, it is now less time-consuming to carry out a specific conversation. However, because of this fact, more conversations are expected, less is done in each conversation, and when factoring in the time it takes to sort out junk mail, email is perhaps less time-efficient than thought.
In email's defence, it has increased the number of "telegrams" among citizens of the world. However, by using email, one loses nuance, facial expressions, and sarcasm. A comment that is not well thought out can have unseen consequences. Blackmail is easy, because everything is saved and one can forward snippets of conversation to an innumerable number of people. Communication is more casual, less thought out, and with more opportunities for unintended insult than had been the case before email. Communication has suffered, overall, as a result of online communications.
In email's defense, collaboration among various businesses, departments, and countries has been simplified. However, studies have shown that people are more likely to accede to a face-to-face request than to a written one, especially one via email. People can forge true friendships or business relationships at meetings or over the phone in ways unlikely via email. So, although collaboration has increased, it is likely more strained, working with nameless figures rather than with known entities.

The prosecution rests.