E-ness.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: Effect of e-mail on people's lives

E-livened by the classics

Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another, and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to the fearful risk of losing his place forever.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne, Wakefield, 1835

I thought that Hawthorne in general, and this passage in particular, constituted prophecy when I first came across them way back in high school. I often marveled at how some guy, in the 1830s, could know so much about how the world would be a century and a half later. Maybe it's that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or maybe it's just that we don't learn much over time.

This piece, Wakefield, popped into my head last month when the news broke about the Melissa virus that, apparently, struck thousands of computers nationwide and crippled the e-mail system.

I say apparently because I wasn't one of the victims, and I'm a little miffed about that. I was out of town when Melissa struck, and I fully expected to come back and find the "Important message" attached to one of my e-mails. As it turns out, I am not nearly as wired as I thought I was. Oh, I use the e-mail system for quite a bit of commerce and day-to-day legitimate work, and I regularly receive the routine barrage of e-mail jokes that make the national rounds, and a smattering also of some of the more vulgar e-trash. But I'm just not hooked into enough e-mail address books to have been swallowed whole by Melissa like so many e-saps I read about in the papers. Hey, I got influenza for Pete's sake - another famous virus making the rounds at approximately the same time - so what gives? Perhaps e-sickness, unlike the real thing, is not an equal opportunity infector.

When they caught the guy who originated Melissa, he was, of course, some young computer geek who, he said, meant no harm. The truth is, though, that one day soon one of these bright young men will indeed mean to inflict harm - a ton of...