[Web4lib] Are e-mail discussion lists still relevant?

[Steven E. Patamia, Ph.D.]

Can we make sense of all this?  Perhaps a little.

Email comes to you and response is optional, but expected.  Twitter comes to
you -- Response is not expected.  You go to Blogs  and response is optional
and inviting, but the percentage of onlookers who do respond is probably
small on average.  Forums are often more ethnocentric and so the likelihood
of responding is higher than for blogs, but nevertheless the structure is
similar.  SMS is delivered with the intention of being personal and in many
cases getting a response.   All of these "media" have practical distinctions
with their own advantages and disadvantages.  Each has had a moment in the
sun when they first become available.  All of them are annoying some of the
time.  And as Tom Edelblute just said, time is what we all have a limited
amount of.
Twitter seems to have played an historic role in the recent Iranian "almost
revolution" -- but so did the technology of rapid image and movie transfers
which is older, but has continuously been improved.  Still, however "earth
shaking" some people find any one of these methods when they arrive, the
actual changes tend to be incremental and often tied to the evolution of
what might still be called 'telephony'.  Be careful what you call a
revolution -- it can be like crying wolf.

If everyone decided that Twitter obviated all other forms of communication
we'd all be hopelessly distracted and never have in-depth analytical
discussions of anything.  If the Iranians busy trying to outmaneuver their
antagonists had tried to send emails in the process, many more would have
literally been killed trying.  For goodness sake, none of the many kinds of
available exchange systems is ideal for all circumstances and so trying to
predict the demise or dominance of any of them is a fools errand.

If you are in a fast changing situation and rapid spontaneous
intercommunication among participants can drive an outcome then you will use
something appropriate to the situation.  When that battle is over, however,
understanding what happened still requires analysis and insight to make
sense out of the chaos.  If you are trying to establish thoughtful and
lasting consensus, you need a different kind of tool.  If you need
consistent and reliable background briefings then yet another medium is
appropriate.  If you desperately need to convince the world (or your subject
matter constituents) that you have a brilliant insight that will change
everything, then you have another choice of medium.  At some point some of
these choice will really be redundant, but the drive for innovation, no
matter how small, will obscure the essential meaninglessness of some changes
and which innovation will truly last is not always clear.

Does anyone think that people will no longer write books now that we can
Twitter?  Get real.  Put things in perspective.  Embrace innovation --
within your available time limits, however!  Do not assume that each new
thing obsoletes anything, however.  Nobody likes a fickle friend -- unless,
of course, they are sufficiently entertaining that you don't have to take
them seriously.

-- 
Steven E. Patamia, Ph.D., J.D.
Global Research Enterprises