Email Vacation Blog

Re: Fwd: Email

2010-03-24T14:44:00.001-07:00

So I'm working on a website for my thesis project: Re: Fwd: Email. Most thesis-related posts will happen there from now on. Thanks!

Although I don't really believe Slow is a solution...

2010-03-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

... this link is still interesting.

Sabbath Manifesto

That said, you can tell people slowing down will make them feel better but unless the societal pressures shift to allow for less "on" time, people generally don't feel comfortable doing it (I'll post some survey data to support this soonish). You can also tell people that smoking will cause lung cancer and emphysema but that doesn't get them to stop. You can tell people that eating fatty, over-processed foods causes heart disease but that doesn't get them to stop. Awareness campaigns can be inspiring and entertaining, but I am unconvinced of their overall efficacy.

"I want to, but I can't."

2010-02-09T14:32:00.001-08:00

So the most interesting thing about this project so far–something I thought might be an issue from the outset–is that people would love to avoid their email for a while, but for whatever reason they feel they can't. To that end, I've added another survey to the site to try to figure out why people can't ignore their email. I definitely have many guesses as to why people feel they absolutely must maintain email contact at all times, but it's best to hear it straight from them.

Slow Mail & Slow Messenger

2010-01-08T16:14:00.000-08:00

Though my email vacation project is primarily an awareness and research campaign, I find a lot of inspiration in the futurist-ish projects Slow Mail & Slow Messenger by Julian Bleecker—an artist and technologist working as a Research Fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication and an Assistant Professor at the USC Interactive Media Division.

Along with Carolyn Strauss at the slowLab, a design organization in New York inspired by global slow movements, Bleecker created Slow Mail. I'm not sure if this is a currently available service or just a service concept, but the idea is that Slow Mail intentionally slows down the pace of email to provide space for reflection and mindful interaction.

"As traditional email overwhelms and platforms like IM and SMS increase in popularity, SLOWmail explores the possibilities of less instantaneity and more calm in communication, creating a new rhythm of social interaction."

The speed of delivery is determined by its semantic content, emotional tags, geographic location, relationship and the history of the communicators’ correspondence. Because time factor of the email is so closely tied to the content, the goal of the project is to encourage people to more deeply consider message composition, trading in fast messages for slower, hopefully fewer, more meaningful messages.

In a related project Bleecker also created a device called the Slow Messenger. It is an instant messenging device that delivers messages slowly. While the message is received by the device quickly, it is displayed gradually one letter at a time based on two factors, how long it has been held in the hand and how long the device is carried while walking. Bleecker has identified holding hands and walking with as interaction rituals signifying intimacy. Therefore, if the user is mimicking the physical activity of holding hands and walking with a partner, he or she receives the message faster. If the message is important enough to read, it is important enough to devote physical activity to.

Introduction or Why You Might Enjoy Avoiding Your Email

2010-01-07T17:12:00.000-08:00

Hello! My name is Amy Martin and I am an exhausted design graduate student. You can read some more about me if you'd like or check out my main portfolio site. I'm not here to talk about myself, though, I'm here to talk about email.

Or, well, I wanted to talk about how I used to discuss 80s hair metal with my fellow preteen penpal, Sarah, but do I really need to demonstrate the joy of personal letters with examples of my tween bubble writing? Probably not. For those of us that can remember a time before email, finding a personal letter in the mail was always a pleasant surprise. It was not just the content, the updates on gossip around town, the secret jokes carried back and forth month to month. It was also knowing that you're touching something that was touched and considered by someone you care about. These grand correspondences happened in slow time, in the prehistory before the internet.

Fast forward to 1995. I have my first email account, yet I still have penpals. The letters were sent much faster, of course, but they were still considered, lengthy affairs. I could easily spend hours constructing the perfect joke or anecdote to send to a friend. I would also expect equal amounts of care put into the emails I received. It was communication, certainly, but it was also writing and storytelling and, man, my friends could write. I was okay with the lack of physicality, the quality of the emails made up for it.

When IM happened, my friends talked about the death of email. We all used to exchange these profound letters that one can only write in his/her 20s and suddenly we were chatting. Quips, really, what we had for dinner and what the dog did today that eventually led to Facebook status updates and Twitter posts.

And what of poor email? What of the vehicle that used to carry our hopes and dreams? The letters stopped coming and stopped going out. I lost contact with my last penpal sometime in 2008. Now my email is full of spam, retail spam, work and disorganization.

My thesis project argues that although the current state of email is tedious and painful, in the glorious future it doesn't have to be. For the next few months I will (hopefully) generate new, enjoyable ways of seeing and interacting with email. This isn't about a new email client. There are plenty of people working on that, rather this is about future concepts of email. To get to that future, I need to know what we're getting out of email now.

There is a massive amount of research on the subject and I've ingested a fair amount of it, but to understand the problem on a visceral level, I decided to intentionally ignore my email accounts for a week. An email vacation, if you will. Not only did I get a much better understanding of what I actually use my email for, but somewhere around day 4, I began to perceptibly unwind. Sure I had to talk to people more, ask what was going on, send more IMs and more texts so ignoring one's email really isn't a solution for email overload. But the space created by excising something as habitual as checking email was palpable.

So I've started this site to see if I can get others to avoid checking their email—even just for a day or two—to see if they have a similar experience. It is entirely possible that I am nuts and I won't be able to convince anyone to take an email vacation. If that is the case, however, then that will tell me quite a bit about our current email addiction.