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The Four-Thousand-Year Journey To Your Inbox
Scribner
October 2009
On Sale: October 20, 2009
256 pages
ISBN: 1416576738
EAN: 9781416576730
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
"The computer and e-mail were sold to us as tools of
liberation, but they have actually inhibited our ability to
conduct our lives mindfully, with the deliberation and
consideration that are the hallmark of true agency."The
first e-mail was sent less than forty years ago; by 2011,
there will be 3.2 billion e-mail users. The average
corporate worker now receives upwards of two hundred e-mails
per day. The flood of messages is ceaseless and follows us
everywhere. We check e-mail in transit; we check it in the
bath. We check it before bed and upon waking up. We check it
even in midconversation, blithely assuming no one will
notice. We no longer make our own to-do list. E-mail
does.It's time for a break. In The Tyranny of E-mail, John
Freeman takes an entertaining look at the nature of
correspondence through the ages. From love poems delivered
on clay tablets to the art of the letter to the first era of
information overload (via the telegraph) to the vast network
brought on by the Internet, Freeman answers the difficult
question, Where is this taking us?Put down your BlackBerry
and consider the consequences. As the toll of e-mail mounts
by reducing our time for leisure and contemplation and by
separating us from one another in an unending and lonely
battle with the overfull inbox, John Freeman -- one of
America's preeminent literary critics -- enters a plea for
communication that is more selective and nuanced and, above
all, more sociable.
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