# Warm fuzzy for a drab day **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 29, 2006, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warm-fuzzy-for-a-drab-day/342107 "2006-01-29T19:43:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BarnOwl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e95f7d/32.png) [@BarnOwl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BarnOwl)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2006, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warm-fuzzy-for-a-drab-day/342107/1 "2006-01-29T19:43:37Z")
Last paragraph from the NY Times article, **’No Messages on This Server,’ and Other Lessons of Our Time** By VERLYN KLINKENBORG Published: January 29, 2006 Amid all that is wasteful, distracting, irrelevant and downright evil about e-mail, there is also this. We carry dozens of people, sometimes hundreds, around with us in our heads. They pass in and out of our thoughts as quickly as thought itself. E-mail is a way to gather these people — so many of them scattered across the globe — into the immediacy of our lives in a way that makes even a phone call feel highly formalized. It is the nearness of e-mail, the conversations it creates, that is addicting as much as the minute-by-minute stimuli. I try to remember that when I am getting twitchy, when I start wondering whether the mail server is down again. I tell myself that I’m just listening for a chorus of voices, a chorus of friends. You can read the whole thing at… > **[Opinion | 'No Messages on This Server,' and Other Lessons of Our Time...](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/opinion/no-messages-on-this-server-and-other-lessons-of-our-time.html)** > > Verlyn Klinkenborg, in Editorial Observer column, contends that he has become addicted to e-mail; maintains that clearest sign of e-mail addiction is simply to ask yourself, what is longest you have gone without checking your e-mail in past two...