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E-mail
Using electronic mail, or e-mail, anyone using a computer connected to the Net can send messages to anyone else using a computer connected to the Net. E-mail has transformed the way we communicate. It enables people to contact each other and respond messages within minutes. Unlike a telephone conversation, which leaves no printed record, an e-mail can be printed out. Businesses are now using printouts of e-mails as records of discussions, agreements and actions.
If millions of e-mails are being sent every day, the postal service must be losing a lot of business. Well, no actually. The number of letters and parcels being sent are still increasing – and e-mail is contributing to this increase. The growth of on-line shopping is producing a measurable increase in parcel deliveries – up to ten percent in the run-up to Christmas 1999 in some countries.
E-mail is normally released from a mailbox to a computer that can provide the right user name and password. Both of these are stored in a computer when an Internet service account is set up. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are companies that offer connections to the Internet. Picking up your e-mail usually means making a local call to the ISP which hosts your mailbox. Picking up your e-mail when you are travelling around and cannot make that local call is more tricky. Travelers can use a different type of e-mail, called web mail that is easier to use from different computers and places. A web mail service is located at a web site. Anyone setting up a web mail account can pick up e-mails simply by logging on to the web site and keying in the necessary security and, identification information, so it does not matter which computer is used.
Although e-mail is great for contacting people far away very quickly, it is often used to contact people on the other side of the same office or to send messages that could be dealt with better by a phone call. So could e-mail be making us lazy and discouraging us from having face-to-face contact with each other?
In the short term, the social effects are not particularly marked. The same people who are e-mailing colleagues sitting nearby are also chatting with each other at lunch time, talking to neighbors over the garden fence, visiting shops and calling friends and relatives. But further in the future digital communication could replace thus routine, daily face-to-face contact with people. All that might have undesirable consequences. When we communicate with other people, we don’t just rely on words. We also use a lot of non-verbal communication – we “read” people’s facial expressions and body language and we listen to the tone of their voice. E-mail eliminates all of these non-verbal cues.
1 What does this text say?
2 What would happen if email didn't exist?
3 If millions of emails are sent every day, the postal service must be losing a lot of business, right?
4 How has email changed our communication?