From Amanda's very early writing (1990s to early 2000s), shared as it was originally written.
Well, I ‘ve discovered it, the latest form of stress! Electronic stress. It’s caused by the internet, computers and , the biggest form yet, email!
At the same time as the new electronic world is helping us learn more, communicate more , do more and do it faster, it’s also capable of causing huge increases in our stress levels as well as making us go faster than ever before.
Especially email. Once upon a time, we sent letters that took a week or more to arrive. Then we expected the recipient of our letter to mull it over for a few days before they replied. The reply of course was to take another week to arrive by post. This gave us time to think and breathe.
Then the fax machine arrived. We had a way of immediately getting our message to another. All we had to do was write or type out a message and make the equivalent of a phone call. We expected a pretty immediate answer, although it might take some time to deliver the actual paper , so a short delay of a day or two was acceptable.
Email eliminates the ‘pass the paper’ segment, we now can send a message in almost the blink of an eye. We know our receipient will see our message the second they look at their computer, so we now expect an instant reply. They don’t even have to create a new page, they just hit the ‘reply’ button, type in a few words and send! It’s scary, we have to think of an answer instantly. I think there ‘s even ‘email rage’, people become very aggressive if you consistently take a couple of days to answer your email!
When I finally realized I would have to have an email address, I made a phone call and zip! I was on the air. (I already had a modem and computer.) And before I knew it I was getting phone calls from people asking me why I didn’t answer my emails! Of course, it was because I never checked them! Another ‘email hazard’.
Since then, I have learned more about the system that lets you communicate faster than anything else we’ve ever known. I now know that if you thought ordinary junk mail was a problem, you ain’t seen nothing yet! I suppose I’ve been ‘on the air’ for a couple of years now and I am terrified to give out my email address just in case the ‘email etiquette’ grows worse!
I think there is a whole world of people out there who must be bored silly and have nothing else to do except write out every joke that ever was told; or surf the net and send on useless information etc! They send out the same message to three thousand people and goodness knows what happens if everyone replies!
I remember collecting my email one day after I had forgotten for a week. To my absolute horror, there were sixty messages! I had apparently been added to the mailing list of an association to which I belong and was the unwitting receipient of mail sent to everyone and from individual to individual! But the worst thing was I had to wait 20 minutes to download all the messages! And then I had to read them! Most of them were absolutely irrelevant for me. I was fuming by the time I had opened the tenth useless message.
So I believe we should introduce the concept of email etiquette! Consider the feelings and time constraints of the people to whom you are sending a message. Will it really be relevant, useful, valuable for them? Do they need to have this extra information in the age of information overload? Are you sending a message with a specific purpose?
And for those of you who need to engage in self defense of ‘email overload’, take yourself off the mailing lists of organizations to which you belong! Ask them to send you information. And only give out your email address to selected individiuals who will respect your ‘email space’.
Enough of this whinging, maybe I ‘ll just create a new vocabulary for cyberspace. And write a book called Cyberspace Stress Busters!
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