5

21st Century Communication

The Skim

Ispent the summer after graduating high school as an intern for my congressman. Not only was that my first experience in an office, it also was my first experience with e-mail. Later that year, after settling into the residence halls in college, I was lucky to be one of the first people in the hall to get Internet access in my room and, along with it, another e-mail account, although it relied on a system known as Kermit that was, even at the time, rather primitive.

Little did I know that I was not just learning some new toy, but rather learning something that would, decades later, become my primary means of communication. Most of my business contacts today are over e-mail, and, in fact, I have had exactly one phone conversation with the people at Wiley, the publishers of this book. Although publishing obviously happened before the advent of e-mail, I am not sure I would even know how to do it.