In the last month, i’ve been privvy to a handful of email hiccups – individual messages that were sent out to a list accidentally, messages that were far too personal to be sent out as such and thus revealed some very disturbing aspects of the senders. It’s also been interesting to see who has apologized and who has not and what form that apology has taken.

These messages, intended for one context and presented in another are quite powerful. They reveal the character of the individual and the importance of perceived context for written communication. More importantly, they are a clear reminder of how easy it is to accidentally shift contexts online and the potential reprocussions of that socially and politically. Of course, the easy RTFM answer is a reminder that all emails should be written as though they are public. In reality, no one ever does this. It drives me batty to think that some technologists think that overriding social tendencies is the best approach.