You've got mail, but who's got rules?

In the Stone Age of Internet technology, roughly seven to 10 years ago, your basic computer geeks would slavishly reel off e-mail replies as fast as their fingers could tap-dance across the keyboard. The daunting task often devoured the evening until finally the last e-mail was sent or exhaustion took over.

But in today's postmodern wireless world, the same now ex-geeks, probably retired millionaires or your bosses, are pushing back against the Sisyphean chore of e-mail. Nearly two-thirds of experienced computer users delay returning personal e-mails from one to three days, when they once would have immediately responded. Sometimes, it's even up to a week, and all, in perhaps an ultimately vain attempt, to reclaim their personal lives. Meanwhile, e-mail novices usually reflect the mentality of their forebears by constantly firing back replies.

That's just one nugget panned from a burgeoning, if still limited, body of research centering on e-mail and how this peculiar dues ex machines is rewriting the narrative of everyday life. With the phenomenon still emerging, researchers are just beginning to scrutinize e-mail habits and their psychological and cultural significance. But what's evident already is that e-mail is transforming personal communication in the same way letter writing and the telephone once did, not to mention changing our behavior in virtually every aspect of our lives, from business to romance, political to personal.