Beware: Electronic logorrhea looms

Originally published 22 May 1995

My edi­tor asked if I want­ed my e‑mail address append­ed to this column.

Good heav­ens, no.

Amer­i­ca may be online, but this is one per­son who prefers his elec­tron­ic soli­tude. They say good fences make good neigh­bors; I want the fence to extend right through my modem.

Let com­mu­ni­ca­tion to my house come through the slot in the door, in an enve­lope with a stamp. Let me see the unmis­tak­able sign of flesh and blood, if only in a hand­writ­ten signature.

I’ll stick with P‑mail. Snail mail. Mr. Zip.

Per­haps the Globe man­age­ment, like the boss­es of many print jour­nals, are run­ning scared of the Inter­net, as if elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion is about to dis­place ink on paper. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em seems to be the strat­e­gy. Put colum­nists online. Give every depart­ment an e‑mail address. Invite the read­er­ship to dump bytes.

Inter­ac­tive journalism.

Mis­take. Big mistake.

Going online is OK for those news­pa­pers that dish out news in gos­sipy niblets that melt in your hand, not in your brain. But not for a paper that aspires to be a thought­ful, reflec­tive jour­nal of record.

There’s such a thing as being too hip, too online, too imme­di­ate­ly respon­sive. As for me, I want to read a news­pa­per that will edu­cate me, not one I feel required to instruct. Give me opin­ion that has been mar­i­nat­ed, bast­ed, cooked on sim­mer; I’ve had it up to here with microwave journalism.

I’ve cruised the Inter­net. It’s 99 per­cent waste­land, a dig­i­tal desert with only occa­sion­al oases of use­ful con­tact, a vast elec­tron­ic bal­loon inflat­ed by ego. I’m not sug­gest­ing we tear it down; I val­ue the free­dom that will let me write and do research from remote loca­tions. It’s not the Inter­net that I dis­like; it’s the Inter­net culture.

For one thing, it’s annoy­ing­ly intru­sive. I’m sit­ting at my com­put­er try­ing to get some work done and—beep—my e‑mail mon­i­tor sig­nals a mes­sage. Yeah, I know, I could ignore it, but 10 min­utes lat­er there’s anoth­er beep and — well, you know, my thought process has been dis­rupt­ed so I might as well look to see who’s there.

Usu­al­ly it is some­one I have no imme­di­ate need to com­mu­ni­cate with, some­one who might just as well have writ­ten P‑mail, and who arrives on my screen embed­ded in a mush of web-rout­ing gob­bledy­gook that’s 10 times longer than the message.

Then there’s the pre­ten­tious ten­den­cy of e‑mailers to use only low­er case type, uncon­ven­tion­al punc­tu­a­tion, and those breath­less­ly sil­ly com­bi­na­tions of punc­tu­a­tion marks called emoti­cons — typo­graph­i­cal smi­ley faces and frowny faces that are sup­posed to con­vey human feeling.

I nev­er send e‑mail if I can write. It’s a mat­ter of not want­i­ng to intrude, of want­i­ng to put a human stamp on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, of need­ing time to reflect upon what I’m going to say. The younger gen­er­a­tion seems to love the spon­tane­ity of e‑mail, the imme­di­a­cy, the uncen­sored inti­ma­cy. I need time, pri­va­cy, and mul­ti­ple revi­sions to arrive at any­thing I think some­one might want to read.

A con­ta­gion of log­or­rhea is sweep­ing the nation. Off-the-cuff chat in real time. Tele­vi­sion talk shows. Call-in radio. Elec­tron­ic bul­letin boards. A Cher­nobyl melt­down of civ­il dis­course. A vast fin­ger-down-the-throat regur­gi­ta­tion of con­tent-less palaver.

The Inter­net is the worst offend­er. Yakkety-yak in bina­ry bits.

With­in a decade we’ll all be online, in instant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with every­one else in the world — an infor­ma­tion super­high­way jammed to a stand­still with bumper-to-bumper extem­po­ra­ne­ous gab. The Inter­net can’t have it both ways; it can’t be an effec­tive tool for seri­ous infor­ma­tion inter­change, and an infi­nite soap­box for per­son­al opinion.

Inter­net freakies extol the val­ues of online democ­ra­cy — a glob­al town meet­ing where every­one has a voice. But when all we hear is hot air from the guy or gal next door, then the civ­i­liza­tion that gave us Ben­jamin Franklin, Mark Twain, H. L. Menck­en, Ernie Pyle, Har­ri­son Sal­is­bury, Scot­ty Reston, and (add your jour­nal­ist of choice) will have expired in a fiz­zle of ones and zeros.

News­pa­pers of stature should resist the dumb­ing down and speed­ing up of pub­lic dis­course. If news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines expect to sur­vive as words on paper (and they will, they will), then they should expect their read­ers to also com­mit opin­ions and queries to paper. Snail mail is thought­ful mail, match­ing the brain’s own sweet time of reflec­tive composition.

I wel­come writ­ten respons­es to these columns; many of the let­ters I receive are more thought­ful and inter­est­ing than the columns that inspired them. But I don’t need to hear from read­ers right now, off the tops of their heads, when I’m in the midst of revis­ing next week’s offer­ing. Not good for me, not good for the col­umn, and not good, I will pre­sume to say, for the reader.