In the Tempo section of the Chicago Tribune was a story titled “How e-mail is transforming our behavior.” It was a good article, and I’ll get to it in a minute, but first a gripe.

I went looking for this article so I could provide a link to it. Naturally, I went to the tribune site and typed in the headline from the paper. Well, it appears that the on-line edition and the dead tree edition have different titles. Highly annoying, and hopefully not a standard practice. Makes it very hard to point out content to other people. It also appears that the content is slightly different as well. However, most of what I liked about the article is still there.

In any case, the on-line version of the article is titled E-mail evolution: Everyday life is being transformed with each click of the send button. The first two paragraphs caught my eye and lead me to read the rest of the article.

In the Stone Age of Internet technology, roughly seven to 10 years ago, computer users would reel off e-mail replies as fast as their fingers could tap-dance across keyboards. The daunting task often devoured the evening until finally the last e-mail was sent or exhaustion took over.

But today, nearly two-thirds of experienced computer users delay returning personal e-mails from one to three days. Sometimes, it’s even up to a week, and all, in perhaps an ultimately vain attempt, to reclaim their personal lives. Meanwhile, e-mail novices usually constantly fire back replies.

I really found myself described pretty well in those two paragraphs. I know I am definitely taking longer to respond to some e-mail then I would have in the past. There is still e-mail that needs to be answered now, but its not nearly as much as the stuff I let go. Especially the stuff I need to think about.

However, I was trying to decide if it was being experienced with the net or just that my life is completely different from where I was 7 to 10 years ago. I was single, in college or just graduated, I didn’t have a kid. All factors that have taken time away from my time on the net and with e-mail. However, even when I have time, I find myself ignoring those e-mails, so maybe it is a factor of experience.

A second wave of research is delving deeper into the psychology of e-mail. Closer attention is being paid to what e-mail does to personality. Staring at a computer screen, usually alone, can lower inhibitions, argues psychologist Patricia Wallace. As such, e-mail users are often more aggressive, even more intimate, than they should be…

Much of the confusion associated with personal e-mail is simply the result of not having an established etiquette on the frontier of cyberspace.

I have had people send me stuff that came across as really snotty or very snobbish when not intended. In fact, that can be a chronic problem with some people. Even little things make a difference. For example, full sentences go a long way to not coming across as a total prick. Even if your grammar or spelling isn’t the best, most people will let that go, but sentence fragments tell me that I’m not worth the effort to type more.

As stated above, people take internet based communications as something different than how they would interact with someone in real life. Maybe the problem is me, where I try to keep my “public face” consistent in e-mail as well as face-to-face or verbal communication. In any case, though, you should be aware of the way people expect to be treated and want to be treated. I can’t figure out why people just assume that when you can’t see someone you can drop the golden rule. I suppose its the same thing that makes “gossip” happen.

As an example, I’ve gotten into fights with people when trying to correct them on a particular mailing lists etiquette. This was an actual comment made by someone: “Its on the net, I can do anything I want!” My paraphrased response: “You’re on a list I run, consider yourself not on it anymore if you can’t listen to the etiquette I’m trying to tell you about.” Of course, this was an extreme example of someone who didn’t always understand etiquette in real life either.

In any case, the rest of the article was pretty good, and its something I find fairly interesting. More so because I can see it in myself, my friends, and my family.