At the moment, the best way to

Ok, let me know if you get this email.

E-mail is a unique communication vehicle for a lot of reasons. However email is not a substitute for direct interaction. ...

There are people who I have corresponded with on email for months before actually meeting them--people at work and otherwise. If someone isn't saying something of interest its easier to not respond to their mail than it is not to answer the phone. In fact I give out my home phone number to almost no one but my email address is known very broadly. I am the only person who reads my email so no one has to worry about embarrassing themselves or going around people when they send a message. Our email is completely secure. . ..

Email helps out with other types of communication. It allows you to exchange a lot of information in advance of a meeting and make the meeting far far more valuable. ..

Email is not a good way to get mad at someone since you can't interact. You can send friendly messages very easily since those are harder to misinterpret.

At the moment, the best way to communicate with another person on the information highway is to exchange electronic mail: to write a message on a computer and send it through the telephone lines into someone else's computer. In the future, people will send each other sound and pictures as well as text, and do it in real time, and improved technology will make it possible to have rich, human electronic exchanges, but at present E-mail is the closest thing we have to that. Even now, E-mail allows you to meet and communicate with people in a way that would be impossible on the phone, through the regular mail, or face to face, as I discovered while I was working on this co-founder story. Sitting of the at my software computer giant one Microsoft, day, I realized on the that information I could try highway. to communicate At least, I with could Bill send Gates, E-mail the to chairman his electronic and address, which is widely available, not tell anyone at Microsoft I was doing it, and see what happened. I wrote: