Communicating in the New Age

E-mail is a new way of communication for professionals in every area all over the world. It is a means of "meeting" people with similar research interests or problems. E-mailers "write" letters at leisure on their computers, then send them through their telephone line to an online terminal far away. E-mail addresses—either names or numbers—automatically send mails to the right locations. E-mailing is not live conversation but, unlike the US "snail mail", as American e-mailers call their postal service, reply can be back at once or within hours, depending on how often the receiver checks in his computer.

E-mail can also create friendship and draw families closer. E-mailers sit in comfortable chairs and "chat" with unseen friends or relatives in other parts of the country or of the world in front of the screen, feeling like meeting pals over a cup of coffee. Linda, a first-year student at Oxford University in Britain, drops a few lines to her mother in New York whenever she is near a terminal. "It's funny," says her mother. "We talk more now than when Linda lived upstairs."

Sending e-mails is far cheaper than making long-distance calls and it may revive the almost lost art of letter writing. At the time when telephone service is becoming convenient and highly effective, people make calls instead of writing letters. Now e-mail has brought people back to their grammar, vocabulary, coherence and even spelling when their fingers are dancing over the keyboard. E-mailing brings people together and makes the world even smaller.