Monday, September 6, 2010

Fixing a Hammer with a Watch

E-mail is one of the by-products of the computer evolution. One of the geeks, or maybe it was a gaggle of geeks thought, "Hey after we're finished crunching this data, we can send notes to one another." Well it didn't take long before a subset of geekdom took over and AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo and Whoopee or whatever were born.

E-mail was a great invention. It evolved much like the creation of synthetic rubber and penicillin...by accident. Soon we were e-mailing one another frantically. I think this happened because it was one of the few things EVERYONE who owned a computer could do. And let me be the first to tell you that I embraced e-mail like a long lost sibling. I sent jokes (still do), urgent memos (during the working years), addresses and all kinds of information. It was easier than faxing and faster and cheaper than FedEx.

Until.....

We received the first social invitation that arrived via e-mail.

I remember it well...it said, "Would you like to have dinner some night?"

And then, as if it were a serialized television program, what followed can only be called randomly episodic.

"Yes," I replied, "When."

"Saturday night."

"Can't, we're busy."

"How about Friday."

"Great, where and what time?"

"How about that new Ethiopian place, it's very lo cal?"

"You know my legendary sensitive gut, how about that new place, the Bland Kitchen?"

"Ok, what time."

"6:30?"

"Great......do you want us to pick you up?"

"OK, how about 6:10?"

"We'll be there?"

Now this exchange took place over a period of 4 days because not everyone checks their e-mail regularly and there were spouses to consult, babysitters to be hired and, I suspect, astrologers to be queried. During the e-mail flurry I had to fend off other invitations while I was in the midst of cementing this single social contact.

As electronic books will not replace paper books, we must look to the fact that e-mail should not replace the telephone. This whole electronic process which took almost as long to play out as "Roots" has pissed me off. Don't wanna say, "hi?" We won't keep you on the phone. Generally, I begin the telephone querying about a social engagement by saying, "This will just take a minute." Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, but it's still faster than "War and Dinner," "Crime and Dessert or "The Godfather's Soup and Sandwich."

If you don't want to talk to us, why have dinner with us? Just send us an e-mail questionnaire and we'll send you one.