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Subject:Re[2]: E-mail: How does it affect our work? From:Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG> Date:Mon, 25 Sep 1995 10:53:01 LCL
Hello Pam,
* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von Worthington an All am 22.09.95
W> > > I feel that E-MAIL has made life a lot more
W> impersonal. This is BAD
W> > > for society, BAD for our kids, but nevertheless, FUN
W> to play with.
W> > I feel just the opposite. I've developed personal
W> relationships online that I
W> > enjoy very much and have done a much better job of
W> communicating
W> I do still have my questions about the long-term effects on our
W> interpersonal skills.
E-mail can complement personal interaction, not replace it.
Once a year I organize a BBS meeting. Everyone is invited who manages to
extract the invitation message from my BBS, including spouse and children.
This
always gives a boost to acitvities in my BBS.
Our German society for technical communicators (tekom) is a not for profit
organisation. During the last years, tekom grew from a few 100 to 2500
members. The people active in tekom are scattered all over Germany (and even
beyond). You cannot expect them to gather every month, as they are to do their
unpayed, voluntary work, too. There is LOTS of phone and fax traffic between
many of them. Presently we try to cut that by e-mail. But it's a new
medium for most of them and so they need some time to adapt.
I could imagine, that e-mail could free some time of their meetings simply to
interact and learn to know each other. Presently, they are pushed to run
through their agenda and get everything done during the day or the weekend.
They meet in person, but have hardly any possibility to interact really
personally.
This sommer I did a thing that turned out to be fascinating: I visited a few
people I had found by e-mail over the years. I got really close to one family
and we enjoy our visits greatly. We have changed our interaction to phone and
visits mostly. But we never would have met otherwise, as they are some 300
miles from here.
Bottom line: E-mail is a powerful tool. But you cannot rely on it for
everything.
From my side this should be the last message of this thread. Let's return to
topics nearer to our profession...
Greetings from Germany,
Alexander
--
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