Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!limbo!taylor From: wagner@UToday.COM (Mitch Wagner) Newsgroups: comp.society Subject: Re: Email / VoiceMail / Phone Message-ID: <1010@limbo.Intuitive.Com> Date: 18 Jul 90 22:41:25 GMT Sender: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com Organization: UNIX Today!, Manhasset, NY Lines: 21 Approved: taylor@Limbo.Intuitive.Com James G. Smith writes: > There is a fundamental difference between email and voicemail. Email is > composed whereas voicemail is spontaneous. Thus, email has the potential > to contain information which is better organized and certainly requires > less disk space to store. Agreed. On e-mail I can easily turn out a well-organized, lucid message like this, whereas on voicemail, it's more like: "Hi, um..... I guess you're not in.... um.... this is ... um .... Mitch... I just called about.... um, the... um... THING, you know, the THING, the project we're doing next week, you know, the thing.... oh, never mind, give me a call, we'll talk." "Um, yeah, me again, my phone number is 555-1212." Most of us are used to organizing thoughts of any complexity on paper or TTY. Indeed, TV and radio announcers and politicians and lawyers spend years honing the skill of speaking off-the-cuff in an organized manner on highly complex issues. And some of them never get it right. Mitch Wagner