This little essay was written when I was required to report to an office every weekday, salaam to various bosses, and communicate with others similarly enslaved.  Though I have since been liberated to enjoy a life of sloth (my natural state), I suspect that not much has changed.

One day I was showing someone how to send an e-mail message to all employees.  When I finished the demonstration, I clicked on "Cancel."  Then I goofed.  In its continuing effort to prevent me from committing Errors of Sheer Stupidity, the computer said, "You have added data to this view. Do you wish to send this item?"  I clicked "Yes," and, before I could say "Oops," a blank memo was transmitted to about 90 employees.

(The moral of the story, of course, is "Think before you click," which is the converse of the Computer Guru's Credo: "Hit keys until you achieve some result – and then look as if you expected it.")

I was, of course, immediately inundated with replies to my blank memo, beginning with the usual dozen or so automatic "I am not in the office today" memos (more about that later), followed by messages ranging from the smart-alecky ("Profound." "You don't say.") to the helpful ("Did you know you sent a blank memo?").  Some individuals are constitutionally incapable of not replying to an e-mail message (even if it's blank!); my electronic trash overflows with such informative messages as, "Thanks," "OK," and "I agree."

I'm glad that the demonstration memo that I inadvertently sent out did not contain some sample text. I might have written, for instance, "This is a stupid memo."  No doubt that would have produced a veritable torrent of wiseacre responses:  "Why am I not surprised?"  "You don't say."  "Is this a test or something?"  "You're right, but thanks for sending it anyway."  (Some people are courteous, no matter what.)

This experience caused me to reflect upon the advantages of e-mail.  I've been around long enough to remember the Dark Ages, when we had neither voice mail nor e-mail.  We used to, believe it or not, leave little slips of paper on each other's desks (these were called "notes"), and sometimes we even visited each other's offices and had face-to-face conversations (called "chats").

The old-fashioned way may have been friendlier, but it wasn't efficient.  Now, we can conduct business with people without ever actually meeting them.  We can hold meetings without ever leaving our offices.  And, of course, with one click we can send global messages about anything (or even, by mistake, no message at all) to everyone.

A distinct advantage is that we can program the system to automatically tell anyone who sends us mail that we're not here to receive it. I confess, however, that I'm tempted to reply to these "I'm not in the office" messages.  The "dialogue" might go something like this:  [Send memo]  Reply: "I am not in the office today . . . ."  "Do you think I care?" [Send]   Reply-Reply: "I am not in the office . . . ."  "You already told me that."  Reply-Reply-Reply: "I am not in the office . . . ."  "So why do you keep answering me?" [Send]   Reply-Reply-Reply-Reply:  "I am not . . . ."  If I kept this up, by the time the individual returned to the office, he or she might have more replies than spam (and that's a lot).

Some people do, of course, give more information than "I am not in the office." They say, for instance, "I am not in the office today. I am home working on my hobby of collecting belly button lint.  You may reach me at http://d_smith@lint-pick.com."  The magic of e-mail is such that it knows no boundaries.  Given a modem and a Net connection, one can communicate anything – or nothing – to the entire hooked-up world with a single click.

Like the telephone answering machine, e-mail is bound to become more sophisticated.  Someone may even devise a system whereby one can answer mail as my answering machine answers the phone.  This system may even automatically send and answer mail, leaving us out of the loop altogether.  (This is not so far-fetched; my answering machine at home has recorded conversations it has had with other machines while I was away.)

Eventually, machines will talk and write only to other machines.  As this electronic Tower of Babel grows, we human beings may suddenly find ourselves talking to one another face to face. I wonder whether we'll like it.