What’s so good about email? Well, it’s quick and easy for you to write an email, you can copy in lots of people, it’s immediate and it’s free.
And the worst thing about email? Well, it’s very quick and easy for other people to send you an email, or to copy you in on an email, and their bloody senseless email arrives immediately. And for bloody free.
This is one problem. Almost all the advantages of email accrue to the sender. The effort, obligation and responsibility all fall to the recipient. In that sense email creates what economists call ‘negative externalities’, rather like industrial pollution or aircraft noise.
In several respects email is worse than conventional paper mail. Letters come in a batch, once a day. They don’t follow you around the world while you are on holiday.
But there is another, less obvious virtue to postal mail.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in