i say we ban email

the more i work in tech support, the more i regret we ever connected multiple computers together. it's like what smug neoliberals say when you're a communist- the idea of a global system of networks full of people trying to communicate with each other looks great on paper, looks bad in praxis (communist for "practice").

we blame others for being terribly rude to other people for the internet's problems. i personally think the larger issue is an inability to communicate with each other clearly in digital spaces. and while both of those things are true, it's slightly more complicated than that. simply, everyone's rude and no one can communicate in person either.

ok, maybe that's a bit cynical.

it's just that i had like 5 customers call me today and say with their awful little mouths "my email doesn't work" and i'm slowly learning that when email doesn't work it could be that a billion different things have broken, or nothing's wrong and the message is in spam. either way, it takes 45 minutes to deal with.

i actually just hate email. it's the RCA CED of electronic messaging systems.

anyway. uh, enjoy your sunday.

4 Kudos

Comments

Displaying 1 of 1 comments ( View all | Add Comment )

Nein MC

1607861755

I don't have a solution, but I have two quotes :)

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The easy possibility to write letters must - seen theoretically - have brought a terrible disruption of the souls into the world. It is communication with ghosts, and not just with the ghost of the receiver, but with one's own ghost as well, which develops under the hand in the letter one is writing, or even in a series of letters, where on letter substantiates the other and can call on it as witness. How could the idea come up that humans can communicate with each other through letters! One can think of a person that is far away, or touch a person that is close by, everything else is above the power of humans. But writing letters means to bare oneself in front of the ghosts, which they are greedily waiting for. Written kisses don't arrive at their place, but get drunk out by the ghosts on the way. Because of this plentiful food they multiply so outrageously. Humanity is feeling that and fighting against it, it has, to disable the ghostly between humans, and to achieve the natural communication, the peace of souls, invented the train, the car, the airplane, but it's too late, apparently they are inventions made while falling, the opponent is so much calmer and stronger, and invented after mail the telegraph, the telephone, wireless telegraphy. The ghosts won't starve, but we will perish.

-- Franz Kafka, letter to Milena Jesenská (March 1922)

I love me some tech, but Kafka might have really been onto something, and to sense that so far ahead of stuff like social networks and oneliner-meme-"communication"... well, maybe he just needed to get laid, maybe he was a prophet, time will tell xD

Report Comment