The e-mail chronicles

I've always been interested in the ways technology destroys us as social creatures. I think I was in middle school when I pondered whether my generation would be adversely affected in their ability to choose career paths because of our exposure to video games that allowed us to save, load, restart, and create multiple profiles. I am angry when I see people texting one person while hanging out with another, and I feel intense shame when I even read, let alone respond to a text message in someone else's presence. And now I wonder, in this age of text messaging and Facebook, if e-mail has become another victim of changing technology. I read in the New York Times recently that "nobody e-mails anymore."

I think I was in the fifth grade when I sent my first e-mail. I sat down at our Packard Bell 386, used the 36.6k modem to dial the Internet, and opened my parents' @npcc.net (which no longer even exists) e-mail account, and typed a letter to my best friend Jacob. At his parents' e-mail address. The subject was "friendly."

It took me a couple of years to break free of my parents' e-mail account, where my only shot at privacy came from the hope that my dad didn't know how to use the "mark as unread" feature. Still an infant on the world wide web, I was overjoyed to discover that I could have my very own web-based e-mail account: for free! And so I became nmk16@startrekmail.com.

It wasn't long before I realized that free webmail was not reserved for geeks, so I migrated to jedi776@homail.com (clearly I was loathe to part completely with my geekiness). The 776 was because my friend Tyler used the number 67, and I reversed it as an act of challenge.

I used to e-mail with people all the time. Friends, love interests, e-mail e-mail e-mail. But at some point it all stopped. Maybe it was the advent of the Facebook message, which took the whole idea of an e-mail address out of the equation. Or maybe it was just that I got a life and became entranced with this novel idea of spending time with people instead of a computer, to the point that I lost my ability to stay in touch over distances. But I actually don't think it's the latter, because not only do I not write e-mails: I don't get them, either.

Of course, we could be looking at a cause-effect relationship here.

Anyway, I think you should e-mail me.