MyTake

I recently lost a game of Scrabble when my niece, using a dictionary that should be tossed into the next book bonfire, disqualified the word “moll.”

I whined about the dictionary and threatened legal action. And when I arrived home I looked up moll on my computer dictionary, cut and pasted the definition, and e-mailed it with high priority to the other game participants.

Ten years ago I'd never have done such a thing. I'd still protest the disqualification; I just wouldn't have sent an e-mail. Had I even been capable of doing so, no one would have been able to receive it. Now even my white-haired mother has a cable modem and e-mail.

That's great if you want to protest a Scrabble result. It's foreboding if you think about how e-mail has started to affect our lives. E-mail could become the kudzu of my life, strangling any free time that I might accumulate.

I have six e-mail addresses—and no I'm not going to tell you what they all are. I'm constantly going through these mailboxes, weeding out the necessary from the trivial, the important from the boring, the interesting from—as all e-mail users can appreciate—the disgusting. It's a struggle that would make Sisyphus glad he has only a rock to roll.

Now it seems likely e-mail will move beyond the computer. There are innovators who think that e-mail is as essential as Vitamin C, as needed as a Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles and as welcome as a winter without snow.

They're wrong, but they'll win.

Do I want to have my e-mail transferred to voice files that I can retrieve via telephone—cell or wireline? Not especially. Will I subscribe to a service that will provide this, letting me economize precious time by listening to messages that probably could wait until I plopped myself in front of a screen and keyboard?

Of course.

Do I want e-mail on my television so that during commercials I can do more than surf through the on-screen guide trying to find something worthwhile among the hundreds of channels my cable company supplies? No. Will I give up two or three or more e-mail addresses to a company that offers me the chance to receive and send e-mail using my remote control? Sadly, the answer is yes.

Why?

I don't like to use the telephone. I try to minimize the amount of time I spend hogging bandwidth in trivial conversations. The impersonal nature of e-mail gives me the chance to decide what to read on my terms and, at least up until now, on my own schedule. That control is slipping away.

This being a new millennium, I'm taking a more positive approach to those things I can't change, so I've found a gold dollar amid the slugs that are piling up in my communications future. E-mail won't rule my life. I can ignore a ringing telephone; I can resist the temptation to open an e-mail in the middle of “The Sopranos.”

On the other hand, my teen-aged niece has no willpower. She'll be unable to resist the message that pops up during “The Gilmore Girls” telling her a moll is slang for:

1. A female companion of a gangster.
2. A prostitute.