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How Darwin Managed His Inbox

Posted by Zonk on from the not-easy-when-there-is-no-reply-all dept.

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an MSNBC article on how Darwin and Einstein managed their inboxes. From the article: "A new study finds that the correspondence of Albert Einstein, as well as that of Charles Darwin, followed patterns similar to modern e-mail communication. Einstein sent more than 14,500 letters. But he received more than 16,200, and responded to only a quarter of them. Darwin mailed more than 7,500 letters. He responded to 32 percent of the roughly 6,530 letters he received."

8 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. What a surprise by Da+Fokka · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Their timely responses to most letters show that they were both aware of the importance of this intellectual intercourse,"

    Of course they were, they are respectively the most important Physicist and Biologist ever. If they had the intelligence to conceive their theories, it should be rather obvious that sorting their mail was not outside the realm of their wit.

  2. Re:Spam by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They used the cost of postage as a spam filter.

    If I could charge spammers the cost of a stamp for each spam I received, I'd be quite happy.

  3. How does this compare? by Dekortage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is just celebrity research. So Darwin and Einstein handled paper mail like we handle electronic mail. Guess what? I handle paper mail that way too. I bet most people do, and pronbably always have. The article doesn't talk about that, however.

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  4. Re:Except they were doing real work... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful
    when you're on a boat studying birds on a far away island or working on important and complex physics problems it's a little more difficult to sit down and read through a letter and actually pen a response.
    On the contrary, Darwin must have had ages to write all those letters during his long voyage... bird watching was only a small portion of the time spent, for the rest it was a long and boring sea voyage.
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  5. Replies Not Necessary by Mean+Variance · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What is the point of saying he responded to "only" 32% of the letters. Many communications I get in email do not warrant a response. Granted, it's quite simple that I will respond with a "thanks" message. But if it were sent in a letter, I don't think I would bother to write (literally) back with an acknowledgement if it didn't extend the context of the message.

  6. Re:only? by Narcissus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How many of those, though, were really just multiple parts of a 'conversation'?

    I know I can rack up dozens of emails when I start using it like an IM service. However I doubt Einstein would write something like "So, what time do you want me to come around on Friday?" and then wait for a reply before continuing with "and do you want me to bring anything?"

  7. Re:Frist by lantenon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the assumption that each of the 14,500 letters he sent was a response to one of the 16,200 he received might not be correct ;)

  8. Weird... by DJCater · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Study suggests modern e-mail habits similar to older, letter-writing ones

    It's almost as if modern e-mail was created as an electronic replacement to mail!

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