Don't turn to these columns for breaking news. Ordinarily it's only after an
issue has stopped making headlines, after it's faded from memory and become
almost forgotten, that I find these columns the proper framework for a serious
look at it. Perhaps the most obvious reason for my doing this is that I want
to appear smart and knowledgeable about the issues I write about, and one of
the best ways to do that is not to go out on a ledge and predict the future.
Instead it's preferable to simply wait until the jury returns with its verdict
and then say "see, I told you so". Another, perhaps less self-deprecating, reason
is that the meteoric rise of many items I might write about is followed almost
as swiftly with their decisive fall, and these columns aren't particularly concerned
with the headline grabbing aspects of internet life. Fads come and go quickly
on the internet, and I prefer to step back a bit so that I can gain a bit more
perspective on the ebb and flow of internet life.
Of course it's not only fads that come and go, that seem to catch
fire and then quickly burn themselves out without hardly leaving a trace. Jokes
make the rounds, as do chain letters (though perhaps these should be classified
as fads). And way up on the list of items that flash meteorically across our screens
are studies that seem to be constantly discovering new dangers lurking in and
around our internet use.
But in this particular case I feel a need to make an exception,
and jump on the issue while it's still hot, even if that means breaking my own
rule about letting issues cool down before writing about them. And although
my haste might suggest that I don't have anything else to write about, the truth
is that I'm in the midst of collecting and organzing material on at least three
topics for other, probably more interesting, columns that I'm planning. My haste
in this particular case isn't because "I've got to write about something",
but because it seems as though this particular topic will soon be forgotten,
cast on the dustbin of internet trivia where it belongs. But if it's still a
bit fresh, I can at least milk a column out of it. New studies about new dangers
make news before they're forgotten - usually very quickly forgoten. So, because
chances are good I won't have another opportunity to kick
it around I want to get a few blows in now. By next week, not to mention
next month, it may already be a non-issue.
But enough of introductions. What's the subject?! Well,
it seems that at least one social scientist in England has identified a social/psychological
problem related to e-mail usage. And even more important, she's given
it a name: Pre and Post Mail Tension. What is PPMT? Well, apparently
a significant number of people who use e-mail are getting stressed out about it.
As one article on the subject puts it:
As many as half of us fail to properly understand personal e-mails - giving rise to conflicts which may not have occurred if messages had been communicated face-to-face - and blame the resulting confusion for arguments and even relationship break-ups.
Which means? Well, I guess it means that we live in a
pretty confusing and stressful world, and that, unless we're actors in a television
sit-com, we should be careful about what we say and how we say it - in e-mail
as in any other medium.
Who breaks these earth-shattering discoveries to the media,
and how do they spread? I don't really know how these things get started, but
it's not all that difficult to trace their development. Or at least it isn't
in this particular case, since there seems to be an easily
identifiable ur-text.
But of course if that's the entire issue, I don't have much
of a column here. That in itself isn't the greatest problem, but what about
Helen Petrie, Professor of Human Computer Interaction at City University, London
who apparently led the research team that interviewed 26,000 people that ultimately
led to identifying this important syndrome. If all we're talking about is a
fear of being misunderstood, or of having our words backfire
on us, it's hard to see how she's going to get much additional research funding.
And apparently I'm far from being the only person who
can't figure out what the fuss is about. In the past "research" of this sort
has led to extensive ridicule, along with quite a bit of well deserved criticism
of the research methods. But with this new "issue" nobody even seems to care
enough to even make fun of it. The first reports I've found about this important
syndrome are from about the middle of April of this year. Around that time a
few news services picked up on it and reported the story. But unlike the famous
"internet paradox" study that received
very extensive coverage, both from the traditional media and then from the internet
cogniscenti who ripped it to shreds, after the first few headlines about PPTM
nobody seems to care, and the story has been relegated to its well deserved
place in oblivion.
Let's not get this wrong - I've been misunderstood in
e-messages before (and in telephone conversations, face to face contact and
.) and yes, sometimes it's even been stressful. To my mind, the expectation
of immediacy can be quite a bit more stressful than the possibility of being
misunderstood, but nobody seems to be studying that. The stress that springs
from the demand for an immediate response may be something that only affects
heavy users, and strange as it may seem (to me at least), not everyone is connected
to a constant stream of incoming and outgoing e-mail. Some people seem to survive
without ever checking their mail (though I can't
imagine how). From the moment we're defined as heavy users, however, we're expected
to be accessible to our mail all day, every day. And once we've started to fulfill
that expectation, there's no going back - the people with whom we correspond
become used to the fact that we answer immediately, and if we don't do so they
assume that something is wrong. Seemingly logical explanations like "I decided
to close the computer and sit down to read a book", or even "I was playing with
my children", rather than being accepted, are viewed as excuses.
We live in a rather tense world, and that, pretty much by definition, gives
rise to tension. I'm often fearful that someone is going to take my daily newspaper
out of my mailbox before I get a check to do so. Considering that undoubtedly
thousands of people take their papers out of their mailboxes, it's a fair guess
that others have this fear as well. Nobody, however, seems yet to have defined
a specific syndrome identified with that. It just doesn't have the classiness
of something internet-related. But of course this was a non-issue to begin with.
Even Helen Petrie acknowledged as much from the outset. In at least one of the
news reports that broke this important story about PPMT to the world,
she also noted:
the problem of Pre and Post-Mail Tension is caused not by e-mail itself, but how people let their anticipation and expectation get the better of themMy guess is that anticipation and expectation are going to be getting the better of us for a long time to come, no matter what technologies we use.
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