Email and the Everyday: Stories of Disclosure, Trust, and Digital Labor

by Esther Milne

Overview

An exploration of how email is experienced, understood, and materially structured as a practice spanning our everyday domestic and work lives.

Despite its many obituaries, email is not dead. As a global mode of business and personal communication, email outstrips newer technologies of online interaction; it is deeply embedded in our everyday lives. And yet--perhaps because the ubiquity of email has obscured its study--this is the first scholarly book devoted to email as a key historical, social, and commercial site of digital communication in our everyday lives. In Email and the Everyday, Esther Milne examines how email is experienced, understood, and materially structured as a practice spanning the domestic and institutional spaces of daily life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262362764
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	02/09/2021
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Esther Milne is Associate Professor of Media and Communications in the Faculty of Health, Arts and Design at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix 
Introduction 1 
I Histories and Landscapes 
1 The Origins of Email and Its Development 27 
2 “Inventing Email” and Doing Media History 49 
3 The Email Industry 69 
II Affect and Labor 
4 Bureaucratic Intensity and Email in the Workplace 97 
5 Moderation and Governance in Email Discussion Forums 123 
III Archives and Publics 
6 The Enron Database and Hillary Clinton’s Emails 151 
7 The Art of Email 183 
Conclusion 207 
Notes 223 
Bibliography 269 
Index 303

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Esther Milne has written a compelling book about our understanding of and experiences with and through email. She maneuvers effortlessly between the everyday banalities and the extraordinary drama that transpire in emails, and masterfully delivers finely grained analyses of email stories while displaying a deep consideration of wider social and political currents. Both inspiring and fascinating.”
—Anette Grønning, Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark

“Esther Milne pays brilliant attention to email, a core building block of the digital world. Milne brings to light a history of email that leads to an insightful and essential analysis of email’s meaning for and effects on us all.”
—Tim Jordan, Director of Arts and Sciences (BASc) and Professor of Digital Cultures, University College London