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

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.

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.

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