If E-mail is a written medium, as Morrisett assumes, our electronic era has within its grasp a tool that could foster the qualities of wisdom and clarity of thought and vision. The image is appealing and bears great comfort to democratically minded people. If this is how a significant segment of the population does in fact use electronic mail, then indeed the future is exciting. As Morrisett points out, these are the intellectual conditions under which the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights were deliberated and framed. A means of ordering and communicating thought, the discipline of writing is a powerful antidote to sloppy thinking.
Electronic mail is like a telephone.
An indication of this pattern is the frequency with which one receives E-mail that is not only replete with typographical errors, but is also commonly missent, contains faulty information and often instantaneous and uncensored emotional responses. Certainly, there are just as often lofty, erudite, and elegant messages transmitted across the fiber optic cable or copper wires, and these would be a Thomas Jefferson style. Business and office settings lend themselves to the telephone analogy. The advantages are widely recognized in the business community. Information transmittal is nearly instantaneous but communication is asynchronous, that is it does not require that the receiving party be present at the time of information transmittal.