And this is just the body. Text, until this point, has also had a kind of body: the page. Formal letters came on heavy paper stock; notes dashed off while traveling came on the stationery of hotels; postcards forced correspondents to become prose poets to close the gap between what was on the card and what they were writing; telegrams with a black rim were to be dreaded. Electronic messages are completely devoid of this sensuality; they all arrive in the same format. They have no messenger bringing them there, as an interpreter. As a result, the tone of e-mails is misunderstood more than half
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