So what does it mean?

Did I learn anything, or just irritate myself and those around me?

Yes and yes.

I learned that e-mail has taken a quantum leap up the scale of importance in our lives since I did my "The e-mail's down!" study a few years ago. Then, we found that a sizable portion of people still considered e-mail an new invasion of their privacy -- something they viewed as a "necessary evil." Now it has take on the status of a utility -- much like cable television did.

There was a time when cable was seen as a luxury -- something you subscribed to to get BETTER television reception. Now most Americans get cable and have no antennae for their television with which they could glean free broadcast. Cellular telephone is close to the same status.

For many of the people I talked to during my week-long fast, the idea of going without e-mail was akin to going without air -- absurd. Cutting off IM or eliminating e-mail in the evening might be similar to going without beer or chocolate, but total deprivation of e-mail seemed out of the range of reality.

I also learned that I actually have more control of my own habits than I thought. I pulled it off -- and didn't get fired or booted from civilized society. And I gave myself many ideas of how to control my e-mail:
--Unsubscribing to mailing lists
--Not responding to students and co-workers at night
--Deleting anything in my mailbox I can't use or file at this minute (If it is an e-mail file, someone else will have it stored on their server.)
-- Waiting at least an hour to respond to someone. I'm far to quick on the draw, which results in overly harsh words and resulting hurt feelings.
-- Waiting to combine my ideas into longer e-mails.

By far, the majority of e-mail messages I received over the week were not meant for my eyes alone. All but a small handful were group messages -- faculty, family, organization, etc.

I need to find ways to keep from contributing to this e-mail clutter.

When I tallied up my week's worth of messages Friday, one of the technicians in the office exclaimed "And they expect you to read all that?" Indeed. A second technician said that maybe we need "someone to pick what is most worth reading."

I replied that we call that type of person a "journalist."

E-mail is a prime suspect in modern information overload. On one hand, it is the easiest method available to send a quick message to a lot of people. On the other hand, everyone does just that. On one hand, we expect that everyone will read any message we send. On the other, we look at our own inbox and dash for the delete key.

There is challenge and there is opportunity in this situation. Easy technology has led to a glut of messages that in some ways threaten the existence of traditional journalism. But that very glut might be best addressed by journalists -- people with both training and talents in sifting sanity from a sea of syllables.

And for me? I'm gladly back to the keyboard. It was a fun experiment, but I'm glad it is over.

Clyde