Ignoring information in the information age

This past Tuesday was an important day. It was the day when OIT's change in the e-mail server took place. Now, as OIT's e-mail said, "you will need to login to send your e-mail messages just as you always login to read your mail." I didn't think anything of it when I got the e-mail. Actually, I'll admit it: I deleted the e-mail. I figured I'd worry about it when the time came and I couldn't send any e-mail.

A few friends of mine who were frantically discussing changing their password to a simple and short "S" alerted me to this important and imminent change. Their reasoning seemed plausible: if we had to login our password every time we sent an e-mail, it would be better if the password was only one letter. I immediately joined in the discussion and added my own complaints to the injustice of such a state of affairs. How could they ask us to type our password ever time we sent an e-mail? This was ridiculous.

When Tuesday came, however, we all realized that we only had to type in our passwords once. Whew, what a relief. Crisis averted. We all laughed about our misunderstanding and went on our day. What we found, however, was that it wasn't just the few of us who thought that we were going to have to type our password in every time. Many other people thought this too.

Right now, you're either thinking: "These are the students at Princeton? How in the world is this University the best in the country?" Or you're thinking: "Yeah, I totally thought we were going to have to type our password in every time. That was gonna be a pain!" If you're part of the former, then, well, yes, not all of us are always the brilliant, well-prepared and put-together students that we present in precept. If you're part of the latter, then you know the indignant panic which grasped me and a few friends of mine this past Monday evening.

My reaction to OIT's security measure is certainly telling. Obviously, it points to how dependent we all have become on e-mail. But, simultaneously, it also points to how we only really read certain e-mails. This does not come as a surprise, I'm sure. As I know most of us do, I read e-mails in a very regimented and hierarchized manner: E-mails from friends come first, professors and administrators next, information e-mails next, and then junk mail. As I descend the ladder of my e-mail reading system, my attention and alertness decreases. By time I get to the information e-mails — arguably some of the more important e-mails we get — the attention with which I read is, to say the least, low. It wouldn't be unfair to compare it to the attention I give the reading of a P/D/F class when I start it ten minutes before precept begins.

This signals a bit of a problem, since I never check my voice-mail and sometimes forget that I have a mailbox in Frist. How will anyone get information to us if we don't read our e-mails well? In this case, the consequences would have been virtually disastrous: I couldn't have sent any e-mails if a friend of mine (a Computer Science major) had not helped me change my settings. Not that it was hard, but I — again — hadn't read the e-mail.

We don't always respond well to change here at Princeton. Perhaps, though, I myself would be better equipped to deal with it, if I read the information that was sent to me. But, for now, all I can do, is try to replace the one-letter-trick I'd so ingeniously switched my password to earlier. If I could just find that Comp. Sci. major to help me do it. John Lurz is an English major from Lutherville, MD. He can be reached at johnlurz@princeton.edu.