Email is about group-forming

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.

4 thoughts on “Email is about group-forming”

  1. 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

  2. Hi Adina,
    How were your holidays?
    I just saw this item about Joi Ito and thought you might enjoy it.
    Judith

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