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The Shift Toward Quasi-Synchronous Email

(This essay was originally written for STSC 260, Cyberculture, at the University of Pennsylvania)

Playing on a simple and straightforward metaphor, they decided to call the command MAIL. Tom Van Vleck and Noel Morris were researchers in MIT’s Political Science department the summer they developed the command that would evolve into the one of the world’s most ubiquitous digital communication technologies (Crocker 2012). Inspired by a Programming Staff Note suggesting the idea, they created a system for MIT CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System) programmers to asynchronously leave direct messages for each other about files they had changed in the system. Asynchrony was in the DNA of email from the start: a message was left and the relevant programmer would receive the message next time they came to the lab and logged in.

Both the material properties of email and the cultural norms that evolved around it centered on its nature as an asynchronous technology, one where users of the medium may communicate without the need for the other parties to be engaged in the act of communication at the same time. Email’s asynchrony has consistently been lauded as one of its most valuable and productive features (Barley, Meyerson & Grodal 2011, Mazmanian, Orlikowski & Yates 2013, Mann 2006). But as email has achieved widespread adoption and usage rates have increased, the cultural norms around email have shifted such that email is progressively perceived and used as a quasi-synchronous technology (Mazmanian et al. 2013, Barley et al. 2011). That is to say, increasingly, people feel and act upon the perceived need to process emails in close to real time and have a similar expectation of others, yielding a cycle that informs cultural norms and shifts email use towards synchrony. The misalignment between email’s material intent as an asynchronous medium and its growing use as a quasi-synchronous medium has serious implications for users’ experience of stress and autonomy.

The discussion that follows will first introduce a framework for contextualizing email as a genre of communication that can be better understood through the lense of structuration, as delineated by JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski. That is to say, if we have a framework for thinking about different communication media along with their form, substance, and rules, as well as the ways in which the norms around them are affirmed and modified, we will be better equipped to think about the shift in the cultural norms that surround email. Then, drawing on first-hand accounts by the creators of email, the note that inspired it, and accounts of the early hacker culture, we will provide a brief overview of the creation of email, paying special attention to its conception as an asynchronous medium and an open standard. Without attempting to tell the story of email’s development over the past fifty years, we will then discuss the social, material and quasi-material forces that have caused contemporary users to, more and more, think of email as a quasi-synchronous technology. This analysis will be based on the growing field of research that looks at the impact of email on worker autonomy and stress. Finally, drawing on this same body of research, we will look at the implications of this shift and argue that the misalignment between email’s conception and legacy as an asynchronous technology and its current shift toward synchrony increases stress and decreases autonomy. This, it will be argued, need not be a permanent situation, as we, as actors, have the ability to continually modify the genre and its rules.

Email as a Structurational Genre of Communication

It would be difficult to say anything substantial about email, its properties and its evolution as a communication medium without the use of an established framework for thinking about change in communication media more generally. The framework outlined by Yates and Orlikowski makes a very compelling case around genres and structuration. Genres, they argue, “are typified rhetorical action in the context of socially defined recurrent situations” (Yates & Orlikowski 1992, 301). In other words, genres are defined as the types of communication that people use in situations that arise regularly. A genre is composed of both substance, the “social motives, themes, and topics being expressed in the communication” and form, the “observable physical and linguistic features of the communication,” including structural elements, the medium, and the language (Ibid.). Importantly, genres have rules which associate specific substance and form with specific recurring situations. Structuration theory “involves the production, reproduction, and transformation of social institutions, which are enacted through individuals’ use of social rules” (Ibid., 299).

But the rules are not dictated by the substance and form alone; rather they are influenced by the genre’s users. By following the rules, people strengthen them, causing more people to feel bound by the rules, ad infinitum. As the authors put it, “genres are by-products of a history of negotiation among social actors that results in shared typifications which gradually acquire the moral and ontological status of taken-for-granted facts” (Ibid., 306). Importantly, sociologist and father of structuration, Ira Cohen, argues that “there is no guarantee that agents will reproduce regularities of conduct as they previously have done” (Cohen 1990, 45). In fact, “the potential for genre modification is inherent in every act of communication” (Yates & Orlikowski 1992, 308). Sometimes these modifications can be so significant, persistent, and widely adopted that they result in the emergence of what is, for all intents and purposes, a new genre. In the analysis that follows, we will argue that the email genre has undergone and continues to experience so drastic a shift in use, from asynchronous to quasi-synchronous, as to push the boundaries of the genre and perhaps become a new genre altogether.

The Asynchronous and Open Origins of Email

It would be impossible to explore the contemporary shift in email use without a brief overview of its origins as an asynchronous communication medium. It will be especially useful to look at this history because the email standard itself has remained so similar. As Dave Crocker, one of the fathers of email put it, “beyond the similarity of message appearance, even more remarkable is that the e-mail service we rely on today has been in continuous operation since those early days” (Crocker 2012). The concept of electronic mail first emerged at MIT in the mid-1960s, amidst a culture of what Steven Levy would call the “hacker ethic.” As Levy contends, this early hacker culture was characterized by, among other things, open access, freedom of information, and the ability to change one’s life for the better through technology (Levy 1984). This, he argues, led to the emergence of technologies that reflected these values. Email is an example of just such a technology, characterized by open access, the free transmission of information, and the ability to improve one’s life through improved communication.

Users of MIT’s CTSS had been using a workaround for lack of a mail function for a few years already, by leaving text files named after another programmer, detailing for them the changes that had been made to a program. In December, 1964, Programming Note 39 went out to CTSS users detailing a number of proposed changes to documentation procedures. Toward the end of the letter is a short section proposing a MAIL command that “should be written to allow a user to send a private message to another user which may be delivered at the receiver’s convenience” (Crisman, Schroeder, & Pouzin 1964) (italics added). When two researchers, Tom Van Vleck and Noel Morris, discovered a few months later that no one had followed up on the MAIL proposal, they wrote it themselves that summer, creating the simple concept wherein “an author writes a message, affixes a recipient’s address and gives this to a delivery service, which moves the message to the recipient who reads, replies, files or deletes the message” (Crocker 2012, Van Vleck 2013).

Not only was email developed as an explicitly asynchronous communication technology, but it was developed amidst the hacker culture as an open standard, such that, as Van Vleck put it, “a general purpose, very simple, MAIL program could be used to support various application patterns, without locking the system into limited patterns…” (Van Vleck 2013). Email thus emerged as an open standard distributed largely, at least initially, through free software, two principles articulated as among the most important by Tim Berners-Lee and Richard Stallman, respectively (Berners-Lee 2010, Stallman 2002). Email would eventually be codified as an official standard in the 1977 RFC titled “Standard for the format of ARPA network text messages” (Van Vleck 2013). As Berners-Lee argues, this openness fosters “serendipitous creation” which leads to a constant evolution in the way we design and use technologies (Berners-Lee 2010). This is especially important when thinking about the changes occurring in the email genre. Because email is an open standard and thus allows for flexibility in application development and subsequent use, both developers and end users have been able to knowingly and unknowingly modify its genre rules, yielding the changes we are seeing today. While a comprehensive history of the development and evolution of email is beyond the scope of this discussion, this brief look at the origins of email demonstrates two things: first, that asynchrony has been in the DNA of email from its inception, and second, that email was developed as an open standard, both points that will prove valuable in evaluating the shift in the genre rules around email.

The Experience of Email as a Quasi-Synchronous Technology

Despite email’s origins and legacy as an asynchronous communication medium, structuration’s theory of modification contends that the usage patterns and rules of a medium are not set in stone and are subject to change over time in response to the actions of individual users which influence cultural norms in a cyclical relationship. The section that follows looks at contemporary patterns of email use and the ways in which these patterns modify email’s genre rules. This will lead to the exploration of the implications of these new quasi-synchronous use patterns. Throughout the discussion, the term “quasi-synchronous” is used to acknowledge the fact that email is not becoming fully synchronous in the sense that the telephone is, requiring that users communicate simultaneously, but is moving toward the level of synchrony that characterizes instant messaging.

Lawrence Lessig posits in The Architecture of Innovation that “a time is marked not so much by the ideas that are argued about, but by the ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs on what one need not question; the power in a particular moment runs with the notions that only the crazy would draw into doubt” (Lessig 2002, 1783). This perspective amplifies the significance of the changing patterns of use around email, as these patterns and the ways in which people speak about email increasingly betray a shift toward email synchrony. The research consistently shows that people take for granted the notion that email is a quasi-synchronous technology, a point that deserves serious attention in light of Lessig’s contention.

The research of Melissa Mazmanian and her colleagues, especially around “mobile email devices,” is among the most widely cited in the growing field that studies email use patterns and their individual and cultural impacts. Mazmanian et al. are specifically interested in looking at the impact of evolving email use patterns on individual autonomy, defined as “the ability to exercise a degree of control over the content, timing, location, and performance of activities” (Mazmanian et al. 2013, 1337). They argue that there has come to exist an autonomy paradox around email, especially mobile email, wherein by each person gaining the autonomy to work anywhere, anytime, a collective dynamic emerges of everyone working everywhere all the time, thus decreasing autonomy by most conventional measures (Ibid.). In their research the authors extensively studied a well known and high performing financial firm and had full participation in their multiple rounds of interviews. They argue that

Looking across the literature on autonomy in the workplace, research suggests that self-imposed restrictions on autonomy are strongly tied to various mechanisms—bureaucratic, concertive, cultural, market, or technological. These mechanisms exert substantial influence on workers to limit their autonomy despite the negative consequences that are generated as a result. In choosing to respond to these mechanisms, workers recognize the trade-offs they are making—acknowledging the loss of discretion, freedom, or authority, as well as the personal costs of behavioral and cognitive conformity, emotion management, longer work hours, work–family conflict, frustration, and feelings of being trapped (Mazmanian et al. 2013, 1340).

In other words, there is definitely precedent for self-imposed limitations on autonomy, but people typically acknowledge that they are doing so. However, their findings demonstrate that when it comes to the observed loss of autonomy associated with spending more time on email, especially outside of the workplace, people are not aware of the ways in which they are restricting their autonomy, instead seeing near-constant, quasi-synchronous, email usage as a given.

Quasi-Synchronous Email Use Patterns

The best way to understand this phenomenon is to look at the ways in which email use is changing and to ways in which people reflect on their email habits. While the causes of these changing practices are a fascinating field of research, a full discussion of causality related to broader technological and cultural shifts is beyond the scope of this discussion. This discussion will instead focus on the interplay between changing practices and changing norms. Stephen Barley, Debra Meyerson, and Stine Grodal from Stanford and Boston University have done extensive research on contemporary email use patterns, published in their often cited E-mail as a Source and Symbol of Stress. Barley et al. are supported by Mazmanian et al. in identifying a number of key uniquely modern common conceptions of email and “patterns of individual use” (Mazmanian et al. 2013, 1341). All of the patterns that follow were identified by both research groups. The most dominant pattern identified was that of “connecting continually,” which refers to the widespread compulsion to check and process email on a “continual” basis before, during, and after the workday. As one of Barley’s et al.’s participants put it, “when you’re sitting there working on something and you hear that little ring, it’s hard not to go over and see what it is. I don’t know how many times I check it in a day, probably, I don’t know. It seems to be all day” (Barley et al. 2011, 895).

Many participants attributed this compulsion to a desire to “monitor flow” which Barley et al. characterize as a “fear of missing something” (Barley et al. 895, Mazmanian et al. 2013, 1341). 50% of the messages received by participants were observed to be of the “FYI variety” and only one in eight elicited a response from the recipient, which therefore caused participants to feel that they needed to check their email to simply “keep an eye on” the stream of messages passing through their inbox with the goal of staying up to speed and keeping others up to speed (Mazmanian et al. 2013, 1342). This perception of email as a sort of ticker clearly betrays a quasi-synchronous conception of email.

Three additional patterns were observed, all related to the uneasy relationship between email’s asynchronous material properties as a genre and its increasingly quasi-synchronous rules. Participants consistently employed “buffering availability” by monitoring their email but deciding when they did or did not want to respond and reveal to others that they were available via email. This was accomplished by way of “temporal distancing” whereby people chose “when, where, and how to engage, or not” (Ibid. 1343). As a result, people consistently felt a sense of “controlling communication,” in the ability to know what was going on with the ability to decide whether and when to communicate. As one participant put it, “just because you know what’s going on doesn’t mean your life is in somebody else’s hands” (Ibid. 1344). These practices and conceptions also led participants to take advantage of a perceived sense of “increased [spatial] flexibility” and use laptops and mobile email to engage in communication via email in a wide variety of places in order to participate in the quasi-synchronous experience of email communication. Mazmanian et al. echoe Barley et al. and report that “by being able to control the timing, location, and occasion of communication, participants reported that using such devices increased their peace of mind when away from the desk and gave them the flexibility to be away from the physical workplace. At the same time, however, we found that the professionals were generating significant unintended consequences as a result of their continual connection to mobile email” (Ibid. 1345). These consequences will be explored in detail in the next section.

The Cultural Impact of Quasi-Synchronous Email Practices

As the structuration theory of genre modification would suggest, the practices observed in the research are engaged in a causation cycle between individuals’ actions and cultural norms that contribute to the genre rules. Mazmanian et al. and Barley et al. find that these practices have led to (and are caused by) a change in cultural norms that thus impact the genre rules that inform the behavior of individual actors. Among the most powerful “collective consequence of use” is the cycle of “escalating engagement” where people have begun “producing and sharing assumptions regarding how professionals should be using…email to get their work done. Over time, these shared assumptions were reinforced and reproduced in practice, further raising expectations about when and where participants should be engaging with their email communication” (Ibid.). Mazmanian et al. attribute this to “sharing assumptions” which Barley et al. articulate well, noting that “although, in theory, e-mail’s asynchrony should have granted recipients the leeway to respond at a time that was convenient for them, our informants described strong cultural expectations about not keeping senders waiting” (Barley et al. 2011, 899).

Due to individual use practices around email, a collective assumption emerges that everyone is available via email on a near constant basis. This finding speaks strongly in support of the shift toward quasi-synchrony; although in theory the form and legacy of email should afford asynchronous use, cultural norms have pushed email use toward quasi-synchrony. As one of Mazmanian et al.’s participants described it, “there’s an expectation on the part of a sender that what he’s sending is being read immediately. Whereas, in the old days before BlackBerrys, if you left a voicemail for somebody or if you sent some other message, a fax, you could never be sure that it got into the hands of the recipient, or when it got in. If you have sent a message to somebody who’s a chronic BlackBerry user, I think you’re pretty confident that person has seen what you said immediately” (Mazmanian et al. 2013, 1349).

Interestingly, the participant speaks of the relationship between classical asynchronous technologies like voicemail and fax and tellingly contrasts them with email, which he perceives as a quasi-synchronous technology. Sherry Turkle touches on this subject in Alone Together, arguing that “e-mail gives you more control over your time…” (Turkle 2011, 207). But Turkle makes the mistake of lumping together email and voicemail as asynchronous technologies, failing to account for the aforementioned participant’s representative experience of email as a quasi-synchronous technology that Mazmanian et al. and Barley et al. argue actually gives people less control over their time. While a more complete contextualization of email among other asynchronous communication technologies like that articulated in John Freeman’s excellent Shrinking the World: The 4000-year Story of How Email Came to Rule Our Lives is valuable, this discussion will satisfy itself with an analysis of email alone.

The Effects of Quasi-Synchronous Email on Autonomy and Stress

The conclusions reached by both Barley et al. and Mazmanian et al. relating to stress and anxiety are highlighted by Lessig’s articulation of the power of societal givens and stand in strong support of the argument for email’s shift toward quasi-synchrony and its associated problematism. Mazmanian et al.’s conclusion has since been cited widely and corroborated:

Counterintuitively, participants did not describe this new normal as reducing their individual autonomy. Expressions of affection and appreciation for the mobile email devices came up in interviews far more often than complaints of blurring boundaries or unease over intensifying commitments. When frustrations or concerns did arise, individuals were quick to assume personal culpability for their actions, thus downplaying the negative implications of stress, limited downtime, and compulsion. By explaining the expansion of their work-related email communication across multiple times and places in terms of personal preference and personality, these professionals reframed their escalating work engagement as a matter of individual choice. In so doing, they could experience restrictions on their autonomy as attesting to and confirming their individual freedom, discretion, and authority and as essential to their performance as competent and responsible professionals (Mazmanian et al. 2013, 1349).

Participants in Mazmanian et al.’s research took the cultural norm of email as a quasi-synchronous technology to be a complete given. They did not consciously identify email as a source of stress because they had come to accept quasi-synchronous email as the new normal and therefore did not appreciate the fact that they were participating in the reappropriation of email as a quasi-synchronous communication medium. As Lessig would argue, the extent to which they took “the new normal” as a given is indicative of the extent to which email has already been transformed.

Barley et al. come to an equally compelling and related conclusion. Their conclusion has its foundation in Wanda Orlikowski’s notion of sociomaterial practices which argues for the significance of quasi-material aspects of technology which are related to genre rules that are not inherent to the technology and possibly ultimately social, but which are perceived by people to be objective constraints of the technology (Orlikowski 2007). In other words, the quasi-material aspects are those cultural practices that come to be taken as such givens that people begin to experience them as part of the medium itself. Barley et al. argue that the quasi-material properties of email are undervalued in the literature and help to explain their conclusion.

Sociomaterial distinctions between e-mail and other technologies help explain why e-mail became a symbol of overload and other communication activities escaped blame. E-mail’s material features, specifically those that stored messages in people’s inboxes until they handled them, enabled responses to be temporally decoupled from messages sent, which meant that people could send e-mail at any time of the day or night ostensibly without disturbing their recipients. These material properties of e-mail combined with the quasi-material temporal rhythms of the respondents’ work to ensure that time away from continuous processing resulted in a build- up…Thus, the inbox served as a continuous and tangible reminder of how overloaded one was (Barley et al. 2011, 901).

Put simply, Barley et al. found that the misalignment between email’s material properties as an asynchronous medium and its emergent use as a quasi-synchronous technology was a significant cause of stress among participants. Even when another medium contributed to their overall sense of being overloaded, people pointed to email as the source of their stress because, in line with Orlikowski’s quasi-materiality, they interpreted cultural norm-based properties like the volume, frequency, and time-sensitivity of emails, as inherent components of the technology. Again, we see that people take the new normal of email as a quasi-synchronous technology for granted.

Genre Modification and The Future of Email

Knowing what we do about the shift from email’s origins and legacy as an asynchronous technology toward its present incarnation as a quasi-synchronous medium, the prognosis for a future where the culture around email returns to full asynchrony would seem to be gloomy. A growing body of research suggests that this shift as well as the misalignment between email’s material properties and its current usage patterns, is causative of stress and decreased autonomy. We therefore have serious reason to think about how we, as the worldwide community of email users, might shape its future. But given our understanding of genre modification and structuration, perhaps we can find reason to be optimistic. After all, genre modification suggests that in each and every use of a communication medium, the actor has the ability to strengthen or modify the genre’s rules and the associated cultural norm. There is no lack of popular literature suggesting how we might each individually reclaim an asynchronous experience of email in our lives in order to decrease stress and increase happiness (Mann 2006, Wilson 2013).

Because the inherent material properties of email are still those of an asynchronous technology, we each have the opportunity to, in our individual actions, shift our experience of email and the experience of those with whom we correspond, toward asynchrony. Given the risks associated with stress and lack of autonomy, even this small effort to push back against the norms and expectations would seem to be worthwhile. But if structuration theory is to be believed, we can also find reason for optimism in the idea that slowly, our individual actions could cause a ripple effect that just might reclaim the asynchrony of email.

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