email communication

[Adam Blatner]

Ah, I am envisioning a world in which much that we prize will be lost and many new values and enjoyments we haven't learned about will become precious to the next generation. I find myself prizing certain aesthetic-intellectual experiences of my generation, certain kinds of songs and dances; and yet I suspect that my grandkids will have discovered other pleasures that make my own treasured values irrelevant, a bit quaint. 

    anyway, now we have email. Certain disadvantages. Yet I like to be able to review at my leisure, comment reflectively, which I can't do in the heat of a face-to-face and even chat-room encounter. Something's lost, but something else is gained. I don't need to feel rushed to come up with something on the spur of the moment, and I think certain kinds of things deserve reflection.
      Other themes in interaction perhaps do better by being encountered face-to-face, where more nonverbal communications and attunement to shifts in mood and expression can be integrated. 

    It occurs to me that there may even be a shift in telic criteria: Some folks I might enjoy more in relaxed conversation, spaced by hours or days, time to think and right; other relationships such dimensions might be irrelevant and activities that require physical presence and/or fast and ultrafast interaction times be prized. 

        Warmly, Adam
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: HV Psychodrama 
  To: Peter Howie ; list at grouptalkweb.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 8:34 PM
  Subject: Re: Daniel Goleman on email communication


  in some way this is like stating that reading a novel is not as rich an experience as seeing a movie..which is, for most of us, totally un true,

  and yet, I do agree that in my experience, something is lacking in the reading of email that leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding...

  but I wonder if part of it is how we read it..fast, not something to mull over...

  I know that when I get a long email I end to skip around in it, unlike a letter or a novel where I can relish each word..

  So is it the writing, the reading or the context...interesting things to ponder.
  Rebecca
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Peter Howie 
    To: list at grouptalkweb.org 
    Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 9:23 PM
    Subject: Re: Daniel Goleman on email communication


    Dear Steven,

    This is an interesting article and worth passing on.

    However it appears to contain what I consider a fundamental flaw which I am not sure is a philosophical one or simply ignorance. He states it in a couple of points: 

    "The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone."
    &
    "But when we send e-mail, there's little to nothing by way of emotional valence to pick up. E-mail lacks those channels for the implicit meta-messages that, in a conversation, provide its positive or negative spin."

    This assertion of his, and I have seen it many times in email forums, is not to my knowledge based on research. 

    It appears to more based on a logical conjecture which I have come to consider as specious. It assumes a number of things of which I am making up a few here and there are probably many others. It assumes 1) that email writing is not coloured by a person's character 2) that email writing is not sufficiently coloured by a person's character that anyone else would notice 3) there is such as thing as neutral email writing 4) that email writing conveys only information of a particular sort of data-like-ness - as though the sender is only an automaton 5) obviously that email writing is different from other writing 6) that context doesn't effect the reading of an email 7) that previous emails don't effect current emails 8) that dry writing of the supposedly possible neutral kind is unlikely to produce big emotional responses 9) That strong emotions can not be projected through a few words 10) That strong emotions can't be effected by reading a few words 11) ...... And probably others.

    My experience is that email writing is like other forms of discourse - it is all about timing, context, interpretation, use of this word over that word and the inferences this bring forth in others. It is in fact because of the earlier assumptions about neutral and unemotional emails that have no meta-communicative qualities, and Goleman also makes this assumption, that have led to this wonderment at how things can so badly wrong. 

    Cheers for now

    Peter Howie
    Brisbane
    Australia
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