NOT SO FAST!

The “moving finger” writes,
And “not all your Piety and
Wit will lure it back.”

By
Gene Farinet

Despite a surge in text messaging, sixty per cent of Americans still prefer e-mail to anything else.

Cyberspace is spinning with numbers,
Reportedly, there are 36-billion messages worldwide on an average
day.
In the U.S. alone, the Associated Press estimates yearly totals
in excess of 1-point-3 trillion e-mails sent (at home and at
work).

Forrester Research counts more than 87-million Americans
as active users. Thirty minutes a day, on average.

As for the Spamalot curse, there is no relief for us there. Ninety billion
intrusions last year, which cost junk dealers 100-billion dollars
on the Internet in 2007. Legislative efforts to crack down
have been largely ineffective or counter-productive.

Haste-lays-waste is one of the most common pitfalls in
the e-mail world. Heat-of-the moment decisions,
an itchy finger on the “send” button can be a boomerang,
between impulse and embarrassment,
and even cause irreparable long-term damage to a relationship.

In the business world, it may be career ending.
Workers, perhaps innocently, pass on information about
company financial setbacks, new product development,
and breaches in confidentiality.

Secrets can walk out the door.

Psychologists say that even today, e-mailers can be lulled
into a false perception of privacy.

Sitting alone at a computer exaggerates a sense of self,
perhaps a mistaken air of security, likely to remove social
inhibitions. Neither seeing nor hearing a recipient, eliminates
subtle body language cues, voice inflections.

In any event, once that button is punched the message still
exists on your computer, the server, the recipient’s
computer and so on.

Your rant is secured for all posterity.

To sum up: some early history.

In late 1971, engineer Ray Tomlinson, working with two computers,
side-by-side, sent the first message to himself.
Nothing so dramatic as the first telegram “what hath God
wrought?”

Or the dawn of the telephone era “ Mister Watson, come here,
I want you”.

In fact, the moment was never recorded as a break-through --
just a simple advance in the evolution of the Internet.

Tomlinson later described that very first message as “entirely
forgettable.”

Nevertheless, Ray had found his place in history.

Credited with initiating the address symbol “@”

.........................................................................................................................
Gene Farinet, an award winning veteran newsman, spent much of his long career at NBC News as a writer and producer working with Frank McGee, Ed Newman, John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw, covering space, politics and special projects everywhere in the world.
 

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