John Udell’s instant classic:
Every interpersonal e-mail message creates, or sustains, or alters the membership of a group. It happens so naturally that we don’t even think about it. When you’re writing a message to Sally, you cc: Joe and Beth. Joe adds Mark to the cc: list on his reply. You and Sally work for one department of your company, Joe for another, Beth is a customer, and Mark is an outside contractor. These subtle and spontaneous acts of group formation and adjustments of group membership are the source of e-mail’s special power. Without any help from an administrator, we transcend the boundaries not only of time and space but also of organizational trust.
An ad-hoc group convened by e-mail dissolves unless membership is reaffirmed by each message. This is a feature, not a bug. Many of the groups that perform work in a modern organization are transient. A hallway conversation is over in minutes; a spontaneous collaboration can last a day; a project may take a week. Software that requires people to explicitly declare the formation of these groups, and to acknowledge their dissolution, is too blunt an instrument for such ephemeral social interaction. Like an operating-system thread, an e-mail thread is a lightweight construct, cheap to set up and tear down.
Although they’re not directly relevant to this post on e-mail, I saw these items and thought of you and SocialText:
On October 13 and 14 Madrid will host the Net.es3 Conference devoted to the contributions of new technologies to social movements.
http://blogalization.info/reorganization/?q=node/view/93
Pointblog interviews Weblogs, Inc. CEO Brian Alvey about the business-to-business blogging start-up (translated from the French)
http://blogalization.info/reorganization/?q=node/view/81
Neal Stephenson, author of In The Beginning Was the Command Line, opens a wiki based on his latest novel, Quicksilver
http://blogalization.info/reorganization/?q=node/view/68
Hi Adina,
How were your holidays?
I just saw this item about Joi Ito and thought you might enjoy it.
Judith
Hmmm. Your comments don’t support html.
Here you go:
http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/000647.html#000647
Hi…I