Lee discusses email as a new medium; educating us readers about its origin. The cultural mindset of those who use it is all too often informal. There is the speed of this new medium, or 'hybrid medium,' as it moves in hyper speed when compared to 'real mail.' It may just be this hyper speed that has made informal dialogues, messages, and so-forth (pertaining to email or digital messaging of any kind) absolutely commonplace. The good things that communication via email and these other new mediums bring us are obvious: a massive amount of information is being shared and its being done so at an exponentially faster pace---thus progress is bound to occur in many places as a result.
The bad things don't always steal the spotlight. As we discussed, informality can lead to questionable behavior/relationships in the workplace. Other issues can emerge in the workplace...like the 'bcc' option in email...which has tons of potential for malicious use. The informality in email and other similar mediums can lead people to misunderstand others. These are just some of the basic, fundamental 'bad aspects' of informality in email and other new mediums of communication. Its kind of corny to quote Spider-Man, but here it is anyway: "...With great power comes great responsibility." Email (and the other new communicative mediums) certainly give great power.
No comments:
Post a Comment