For a full list of today's Salon Technology stories, go to the Technology home page. You'd be happy to buy online, but you know you'll never make contact with the delivery guy. Unlike a recorded message, there's no easy way to tell if an e-mail message is a canned response or has been personally composed and sent to the recipient. Perhaps they'll delay responding to a message for a few hours or pepper their missives with occasional grammar or punctuation errors.
Automated systems work because people tend to send e-mail on similar topics.
Form-letter replies work great if you can pick the appropriate form response to a particular letter. It's a precedent that could eventually tear at the social fabric of the online world. Today, exchanging e-mail is probably most people's favorite Internet activity. We use it to catch up with friends, make dinner plans, exchange ideas. Instead of a pleasing exchange with friends, a blast of junk e-mail is an attack by someone who is trying to take advantage of you.