I suppose that I'm a minimalist at heart. And not only in my artistic tastes. A vast assortment of services are available via the web, but most of them can be achieved through the the rather simple possibilities of e-mail. So who needs them? The web offers us so many possibilities that it seems a waste not to check out as many of them as possible. And doing so seems to inevitably act against the development of any coherent pattern or habit. If we're always checking out something new, we're never establishing routines, but instead jumping from the new to the newer. In any given month I'll come across at least a handful of web sites which I bookmark and tell myself to visit weekly, and by the end of the next month I've forgotten about most, if not all, of them.

Ah, but e-mail is always there. Sites I have to remember to visit; e-mail accomplishes what push technologies promised but weren't able to achieve. If I enter an item in my online calendar, I have to remember to look at that calendar. And who knows: in the time that transpires from when I entered the item in the calendar until I have to accomplish the task, perhaps I've stopped using that calendar, or I've moved on to some other nifty tool. But if I send myself a reminder, it shows up in my e-mail, and because I always check e-mail, I see it, and remember it.

Go to: Homeless in Cyberspace