Interesting how this sense of loss of control always comes back. I think nowadays we wouldn't say this. Cf. Shapiro et al 1985.

p. 25

Perhaps the attribute of electronic mail systems that most distinguishes them from other forms of communication is their propensity to evoke emotion in the recipient--very likely because of misinterpretation of some portion of the form or content of the message--and the liklihood that the recipient will then fire off a response that exacerbates the situation.... All these factors taken together create a novel situation that must be taken into account repeatedly in using electronic mail systems.

One additional factor often mentioned is anonymity. It would appear that persons sending electronic mail to others over a network who are not know in person might be freer in communicating feelings than to friends or associates. [go on to say that they haven't seen this]

Interesting that this argues for editorship--i.e. McCarty's approach, rather than free-flow, Conner's.

p. 21

One of the most surprising things about electronic mail is the ease with which misinterpretations arise. People are used to reading "body language," voice intonation, and numerous other cues when interpreting messages deleviered in conversation, or even on the telephone. Those cues are missing in electronic mail, and what was meant as a casual comment, or an attempt at humour or irony, is misinterpreted.

pp. 15-16

Interesting discussion of typographic contextualisation cues between quick informal email and more deliberate one. Recommends that the READER take a different approach to each.

Why do we care about the level of formality of a message? Simply because the content of the second message should be given more attention and care when received than the first. Words were chosen in the second, and therefore could be expected to be chosen carefully to convey the meaning intended. In the first, informal, message, the words might well have been dashed off, and should be taken quite lightly. You should not try to read deep meaning into a hasty note. (In our other written correspondence, we have other clues: scribbled notes on the back of an envelope are treated more informally than typed letters. However, on your terminal, all electronic messages in one sense look the same, so greater attention must be paid to what clues there are to their level of informality.) [Emphasis added].

p. 14 reference to "Smiley face"

p 14. Discusses "the tradition of flaming" on ARPAnet.

p. 13 Already aware of the issue of proliferation

Electronic mailboxes fill up with peripheral material that needs to be scanned and continuously culled. If one of your recipients decides that somebody else needs to see a message, it can be forwarded at that time.

Consider an extreme but possible case: A message contains a distribution list of 20 people. Let's say the message asks for comments on a position paper. Each of the recipients responds, copying all the original recipints... Each of those answers is in turn comments on by each original recipient, copying all original recipients. This process generates 421 messages in every person's inbox, with the total system containing 16,421 messages. If each message takes an average of 100 characters, this process has used up 1.6 megabytes of disk storage.This is, in addition, of course, to the social cost of all the human time and effort that has gone into this electronic correspondence.

p. 14 Recommendation for people to summarise replies on "special insterest group"

A related phenomenon is the "special interest group," a named group of recipients having a common interest, and exchanging messages on that topic, accross computers and across the country. Within these groups, a common means of reducing message prliferation is for a message author to ask, in the message itself, that replies be forwarded directly to him or her; the original author will summarize in a later message the replies received for the benefit of the group. This is a good idea that should become a common protocol, invoked by a commonly understood keyword or phrase in a message.

p. 11 recognise the emotional aspect even then

Within these categories, we highlight the issues related to the emotional impact of electronic messages, since the immediacy of the medium, and yet the remoteness of the participants, leads to some unique problems in this regard.

p. 11. How it is different from other things

We have tried to indicate that electronic mail is different. Part of what we mean by that is that the old telephone or letter-writing rules of behavior do not automatically transfer over to this medium and work. You don't write business letters as electronic messages; messages are usually more informal. And yet electronic messages are not printed telephone conversations either. What we find is that the medium is different enough, and the average user's experience has been short enough, that problems arise. Meanings are misunderstood. Tempers flare and cause ill-conceived responses to be written. Many recipients' time is wasted reading content-free or irrelevant messages.

What we need is a new set of rules: how to be a constructive, courteous sender and receiver or electronic messages. We certainly do not have this set of rules, all tied up in a tidy package. We do, however, feel it is important to hasten the cultural evolution toward this goal. What follows, then, is a discussion of some of the important guidelines we've observed from experience.

p. 11 Point about evolution and new technologies

People have had about 50,000 years' experience in the use of speech and gestures, 5,000 years' experience in writing, and about 100 years' use of the telephone. This cultural history should not be taken lightly; the entire fabric of our society has been shaped in significant part by cultural accommodations to our means of communicating.

As individuals of the species, living within a particular culture, we have a particular messaging history: from borth, we learn speaking roles and rules from conversations. By age 4 or 5, some basic telephone habits are learned (such as: "Say something when you pick up the receiver have it rings--don't just stand there sliently"). By age 7, we are writing non-trivial messages. The average adult has accumulated hundreds,--perhaps thousands--of rules of behaviour regarding telephone and written ethics and etiquette, from practical experiences with these tools since those early years.

p. 9 Note that pre-email, all correspondence went via secretary.

Traditionally, Organizations have channeled and filtered their message flows long corporate hierarchical lines. For example:

• You do not send a memo to your supervisor's boss without a copy to your supervisor, and usually not without explicit prior permission.
• Secetaries filter incoming mail, telephone calls, and inter-office memos. For senior executives, ALL communications (other than in meetings and conferences) pass through this important filter.

These mechanisms have evolved to support the corporate structure, and to conserve the time and attention of its executives. Comparable mechanisms are not yet in place for electronic mail. Executives working in the evening at personal computers at home can send messages without "copying" their secretaries, resulting in those secretarties being "out of the loop" on matters of which they're normally aware. A junior executive can send a message to a senior executive, bypassing several | levels of control.

Shapiro, Norman, and Robert H. Anderson. 1985. “Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail.” Product Page. http://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3283.html.