h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was reading a report at work earlier. It was describing how the IT support team had managed a major technology incident. One sentence caught my eye. The help desk agent wrote that the user hadn't telephoned the help desk, but they'd contacted Support by mail.

Clearly they meant e-mail, not mail. I formed an amusing image in my mind of the postman arriving at the office with a large grey sack full of letters…

***

Bob from the IT department in an idle moment saunters over and starts sorting them out:

"The post's arrived … Hey, Gary, there's one for you."

Bob spins the letter across the room as if it were a frisbee. Gary retrieves it from beneath the filing cabinet, then opens his desk drawer and rummages through the contents. After removing a stale pack of biscuits, a 1978 desk diary and an assortment of broken biros he eventually pulls out a letter opener, then carelessly slits open the envelope. Unfolding the paper he relays the contents.

"It's from Carol at Head Office - it looks like the Payroll run failed on Thursday."

Bob: "Not again, that's the second time this year, isn't it? I guess we'd better do something about it. Can you contact the user and get some details?"

Gary: "Sure, Bob."

Gary walks over to the stationery cupboard and after a brief search selects some headed notepaper and an envelope. He also picks up a couple of new biros, then walks back to his desk and begins to write:

"Dear Carol.

Thanks for your letter. So Payroll's down again, is it? Can you write down the error messages and send them in, so we can take a look? ..."

* * *

This is hardly what Bill Gates once described as 'Business at the speed of thought'. We may once have communicated this way, but after we invented real-time transactional computer systems, we'd have used the telephone to report problems with them, and hoped that someone was there at the other end to take the call.

Since the mid 1990s, though, we've found it just so much easier to say things by sending off an e-mail. We can spend as much time as we need to get the wording accurate, we can send it to as many or as few people as we like, and we have a permanent record of it in our Sent folder. And unlike a two-way telephone conversation, we don't have to field any awkward questions. And if we're not so good at the language, it's easier. It wins every way.

Except that it doesn't. E-mail may arrive within seconds, but it hardly grabs the attention of the recipient. They can happily let it sink to the bottom of their Inbox. It could take them hours to get around to reading it.

For important stuff, we have to get back to using the telephone again - it never went away, of course - we just got seduced by something that was easier to use.

[Amy P]

I must admit I prefer e-mail to telephone, as I like to get the wording clear, and the sent items can be very handy for future reference. Plus if I receive an e-mail, I can read it and digest it, whereas on the phone, I often struggle to take in all the necessary details.

In my previous job, phone was useful, though, as I could talk people through tasks in real time, rather than having to describe the task and then answer follow-up e-mails...

In my current job, I mostly answer questions about data, so I always find it difficult waiting for the computer to load while being on the phone, and if I take a message, I find it easy to overlook it later, whereas I log my e-mails so I know what needs doing, even if it is at the bottom of my inbox... I'm contemplating sending myself an e-mail every time I take a message, but I don't always do that yet...

Some people phone to check if I can answer their question and then send me an e-mail to summarise our conversation, which works best for me

An even more ancient technology: semaphore. Does anyone remember the Monty Python version of "Wuthering Heights" using that?

That's not so far removed from the signing of TV shows for the deaf.

How do I deal with those luddite-minded who send you an e-mail and then phone you up to say they've sent you an e-mail. ( A few years ago, read fax for e-mail).

Then they phone and ask why you haven't answered. Or if you have answered, they phone and tell you they've got the answer. ...