Our tether to e-mail saps energy and soul

Ever checked your e-mail at a party? Maybe sneaked a quick peek at the Crackberry while on the phone with your mom, to see if your boss responded? If so, you aren't alone. We send and receive a lot of messages -- 600 million worldwide every 10 minutes -- so personal time is less so these days. E-mail blurs the lines between work and life, and we are suffering for it.

In "The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your Inbox," John Freeman, book critic and editor of the literary journal Granta, argues the case against modern, always-on communication. With Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, cell phones and texting, people are always reachable. Freeman vividly illustrates the moral, physical and psychic costs of 24/7 availability.

As Freeman presents the history of personal communication, with every leap in access, ease and speed there has been a corresponding societal change. Mail once connected families torn apart by immigration and war. The telegraph sent information instantly across great distances. Together with the standardization of time, swift communication created a sense of national unity, the spanning of distances, and the anxiety of a world in flux. With the invention of ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, and then the Internet itself, communication was revolutionized once more -- one mind could be connected to a thousand instantly.

While technology advanced, communication moved from meaningful to banal. Freeman begins his book with an ancient love poem carved in clay. Although only a few simple lines, the sentiment transcends time. The same words, "You have captivated me: let me stand trembling before you," would not have the same gravity if e-mailed, and would likely be deleted to clear the inbox. More and more, the mundane task of processing e-mail has taken over our lives, and we are left with, as Freeman says, the "feeling that someone has invaded your head."

The problems associated with e-mail go beyond its disruption and takeover of the workday. The necessity of sorting, answering, archiving and deleting the estimated 200 hundred e-mails the average worker sends and receives is crushing. We have lost the art of face-to-face communication, a human necessity. We have opened the door to grifters and thieves. Privacy, civility, real community are diminished in the name of speed. E-mail rewires our minds and drives us apart by devaluing the world around us.

While many of these woes have been identified by others before, Freeman's core message of living in the real world, not the virtual, will resonate with anyone who has ever been tempted to answer an e-mail at 2 a.m. He knows we can't, and shouldn't, avoid e-mail completely. But when confronted with the choice between e-mail and life, heed his advice: "Don't send."

Martin Schmutterer has four e-mail addresses, two Twitter accounts, a Facebook page, and a cell phone that he fears. He is assistant manager of Common Good Books in St. Paul.