Email – a good thing or a bad thing?
In recent years email has become an increasingly important means of
communication. However, like most things it has both advantages and
disadvantages
On the plus side:
•First of all, email is easy. All you need
is the appropriate software on your
computer. There are no stamps to stick
and no trips in the freezing cold to
postboxes.
•The second point is that email is fast.
No matter where you’re sending your
message, whether it’s to the next street
or to the other side of the planet it takes
only seconds to reach its destination.
Nowadays, whenever I send regular
mail (or snail mail as email users call it),
I can’t believe that it’s actually going to
take days to reach its destination. How
primitive!
•Email is not only fast, it is also cheap.
Unlike long distance telephone calls,
you pay no more for messages.
•Also, email messages are easily stored.
Because they’re electronic, saving an
email message you’ve received (and
calling it back up again later) is a
breeze.
•In addition to this, email is
environmentally friendly because of
being electronic. It saves natural
resources such as paper.
•Last but not least, email is practically
universal. More and more people use it
every day.
On the minus side:
•Firstly, email is impersonal. You can’t
see a person, face to face; it’s difficult to
get across subtle meanings in email
prose with no visual or voice clues.
•Secondly, it can be argued that email is
in fact too easy. You can write a
message in a few seconds and send it off
with one click. And once sent, you can’t
get back a message that may have been
written in a fit of irritation or anger.
•Another point is that email security is
lax. As your email message makes its
way to its destination, it has to pass
through other, public, systems. Anyone
with the right technical know-how can
intercept it without your knowing.
•although, as stated above, it’s an
advantage that email messages are
easily stored, this can also be a
disadvantage. If you say nasty things
about your boss in a message, a saved
copy can come back to haunt you in the
future.
•A final and very important point is that
email can take over your life. Because it
is so easy to start getting more and more
correspondence, and you end up
spending most of your day reading and
responding to floods of messages.
Overall, however, the pros of email outweigh the cons. Email has
transformed the world of communication in largely beneficial ways, and alongside
text messaging, is now a major way of keeping in touch.
*From: “New Headway” (upper-intermediate)
Mass Media 