Email: I Love It (as submitted to San Francisco Focus magazine) © 1996 Reva Basch Email is a writer's medium. It takes that closed loop, mind-to-keyboard-to- monitor, and stretches it to include an audience as well. Hunched over our computers, we're no longer working in total isolation. We can defer a response until we've crafted the perfect phrase, hit on just the right tone. But on the other end, there's always the expectation of an answer; our readership is waiting, hands poised to applaud or to pound on their own keyboards in furious response. Email is performing without a net. Of course, it's the perfect medium, too, for those of us who have never warmed up to the telephone as a device for witty banter or long, soul-searching conversations. Some of us -- cautious, shy, uncertain -- want to think before we talk. Email serves us well. It has the immediacy of a phone call, without the obligation to respond in real time. It offers the luxury of letter-writing, allowing you to think, to choose your words carefully, to get past the anger, annoyance or astonishment of your first off-the-wall response. It's my preferred mode, by far, of machine-assisted communication. You can answer your email, or choose not to, at any hour of the day or night. I've volleyed messages back and forth with a correspondent in Australia, our circadian rhythms 18 hours askew. Women friends who've struck up cyber- relationships talk about "sweet morning email," the unmatchable bliss of logging in to find a pre-dawn message from their beloved -- and the gut-wrenching desolation when the system coldly announces "No new mail." Women do seem particularly drawn to the intimate possibilities of email. Folklore has it that females respond more strongly to written erotica -- the joy of text -- while men prefer dirty pictures. Email, for good or ill, leaves a lot to our imagination. It's not uncommon, once you sink into the virtual life, to find a dozen or more messages waiting whenever you check in. Dealing with mass quantities of email can torque you around, whiplash your attention, slice reality like the climax of _2001_. One minute you're in a French provincial boudoir, the next you're in psychedelic hyperspace, waiting for the universe to be reborn. Meandering through your mail queue, you find junk mail intercut with impassioned confessions, business letters mixed with juicy interoffice gossip, passive- aggressive whining, jokes-of-the-day, gems of casual correspondence that practically leap off the screen in their brilliance. Email flattens hierarchies; there's no telling who you'll hear from. Most executives still read and answer their own. Bleedin'-edge techno-celebs groove on this intimate, but safely hands-off, channel for fannish adulation. You're very likely to get a response, perfunctory and form-like though it may be. Having an email address leaves you open for heat-seeking missives, trial balloons, random CQs from schoolkids with an assignment to "email somebody," or a poignant message-in-a-bottle from a lonely physician in a Third World country who's managed, somehow, to maneuver his way to the Net. As the email imperative ripples out to traditionally unwired realms -- homeless shelters, museums, spiritual retreats -- your past will catch up with you. Interspersed in your quotidian queue you'll find messages from 5th grade classmates, ex-lovers, your mom – little emotion-bombs left by folks you never would have dreamed would find their way online. In email, you get the whole range of human experience -- at once, and without warning. It messes with your perceptions in the most peculiar way. This is where Eudora comes in. I love Eudora because its developers had the panache to name it for Eudora Welty, who wrote a short story called "Why I Live at the Post Office." But Eudora is just one of several free-standing email programs that let you tag or filter your messages as they come in and consign them to separate mailboxes. That way, you can deal with business when you're ready for it, bulk mail when you have the time, banter and billets-doux whenever the moment seems right. Email programs also let you play with sig files, one of the most abused forms of self-expression known to the civilized world. Sig (short for signature) files originated, in the early days of the Net, as a means of automatically affixing some basic information -- like your street address, your institutional affiliation, the fact that you had a PhD -- to every piece of email you sent. A sig file is sort of a digital calling-card. Some people include a favorite slogan or quotation, something that reveals a flash of humor or a glimpse into their psyche. But this perfectly civilized convention has, in some quarters, transmuted into flamboyant displays of ASCII artwork, screen-size extravaganzas depicting cars, cats or martini glasses -- whatever floats the sender's boat – etched out in Xes and Os. This is not considered acceptable email etiquette. You can tell it's inappropriate when the sig file takes up more lines than the message to which it's appended. Unlike your login ID, a sig file doesn't =have= to follow you everywhere. My default is "off." I switch it on as a quick way to send my snailmail address to someone who needs it: "See sig for where to send the check." And, very rarely, to show off a majorly cool quote. Another mail manager feature (the mail program on America Online is particularly good at this, too) makes it easy to send formatted attachments -- executive reports, recipes, digital snapshots -- through email, just like clipping them to a letter. I'm charmed by the thought of legions of elders zapping photos of their grandkids back and forth through the ether. Stand back: Granny's got a scanner, and she knows how to use it! Email is free, or essentially so. Let's not overlook the miracle of being able to send the equivalent of an overstuffed FedEx envelope, or to chat with your cousin in Paris or your colleague in Taiwan, without paying postage or long- distance charges. This fact has not escaped the junkmailers, who can reach out and annoy thousands of potential customers with a few keystrokes and no out-of- pocket expenditure, either. Mass-mailing, a.k.a. spam, is a bigger problem out in the Usenet newsgroups, where you're forced to confront the identical posting again and again and again. But you'll encounter spam in email, too. There are Net equivalents to Publishers' Clearinghouse, and worse, sites that are notorious for their support, even encouragement, of junk mailers. If you find yourself plagued by persistent mass mailings, you can set your email filters to screen out and delete anything that originates from certain locations. Or simply browse through your mail queue and toss the obvious trolls -- Subject: "Earn Millions in Your Spare Time" -- unopened. That's why God invented the delete key. Some cybermarketeers are fiendishly clever, though. They'll manufacture a "Re:" on the Subject line to make it appear that they're responding to something =you= sent =them=. Or they'll craft a personalized come-on: "As a concerned cyber- citizen, I'm sure you've wondered..." It's the online equivalent of those junk mail pieces designed to look like a check, or a notice from the IRS. You don't dare discard them unread. At least they're not killing trees. Email is an environmentally friendly medium. Bandwidth aside, it consumes very few resources beyond what your computer system, and the Internet, need in order to operate. And there are side benefits: The minute you subscribe to a computer-related publication, you start getting AOL diskettes and Internet-connectivity CD-ROMs in the mail. Thanks to AOL, I have enough 3.5 disks to last me til the next new storage medium comes along. The CDs make terrific coasters, or Frisbees for very small dogs. The diskettes are eminently recyclable, too. You can always reformat them and use them for whatever you'd use blank diskettes for. Or let your creativity soar: Why not spray paint them in festive colors, run a ribbon through the write-protect slot and use them as Christmas tree ornaments? It's a Martha Stewart Plugged In moment. Eat your heart out, WIRED. Net-heads like me are Welty beyond measure; we live at the post office. My clients, my friends, my family of choice -- all, with very few exceptions, use email to stay in touch. The email resisters strike me as cranky and inconsiderate; at this stage, it's like not having an answering machine. Email keeps me sane, grounded, in touch with the world. Whether I'm writing, reading, or staring blankly out the window, my email autopilot knows to go online and check for new mail every 15 or 20 minutes. Social creature though I am at heart, I'm content in my solitary dominion, knowing that several times an hour that cherished little message will pop up, drawing me back to what really matters: "You Have New Mail." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Reva Basch lives in an area without door-to-door mail delivery. She has to go to the post office to pick up her mail. She'll be right back.]