zerosleeps

Email is, and always has been, my preferred method of written communication for two reasons, both of which are topics of this post from Zachary Kai.

The first is it’s openness, stability, and ubiquity:

Social media platforms rise and fall like ancient empires sped up a thousand times. Yet email endures. Like the postal service or the printed book. Is it any coincidence these technologies remain my great loves? They share a quality I struggle to name. Perhaps it’s permanence in an ephemeral world. You can tuck a letter in a drawer, discovering it decades later. A book can outlive its author by centuries. One can archive, search, and treasure an email. They’re all vessels that honor my beloved words.

And in their longevity is their flexibility. You can read a book anywhere, anytime. You can send a letter to the farthest-flung corners of the earth imaginable. And you can email anyone.

The second is in it’s user interface:

You can choose to engage with it in human time, and so can the recipient: compose when you have something to say, respond when you have space to think.