Why I love emails
Yesterday I was thinking about sharing. Must be because I randomly stumbled upon this App (which I highly recommend). I must premise this by saying that I’m not the most sociable person on earth, at least not in terms of social media.
Every now and then I come across something I think I should share with someone. That someone is always a specific person. It never occurred to me the idea of sharing something to everyone, just for the sake of sharing it. The act of sharing, for me, is always tied to a person and to something I have in common with him or her. Which is why my love for emails is growing with time. To me, emails are one of the best forms of communications in the digital age. And that’s because they:
- are private
- are intimate
- are deliberate
- are asynchronous.
Private because it’s between myself and the person on the other side of @ddress. There’s no crowd involved, no one can peak through the conversation. No one can jump between myself and the person I’m communicating with. And that’s also why they are intimate. Emails can be pretty much everything we want them to be.
Emails are also deliberate. Sharing something requires a quick tap. You find something, tap on a button on your phone and that’s it. Emails on the other hand, require a deliberate effort. You must open your email client, fill in the to field, add the link and probably write a line or two. These are extra steps that require an effort. And that’s good.
Lastly, emails are asynchronous. Your email is not gonna be lost in some endless Twitter or Instagram feed. Your email will sit there, in the inbox folder of the person you sent it to. And that person will probably have to do something about it.
This is a long way to say that if you want to get in touch, please do it via email. I LOVE to receive emails and engage in conversations with pretty much everyone on every topic. And if you find something interesting, try sharing it via email with someone specific rather than with the entire world.