Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

E-Mail Great Way To Communicate

For Sergey Bashlovkin, a Siberian interested in how others around the world think and live, e-mail is a technology that puts the world at his fingertips.

"Living in the very heart of Russia, it's not easy to talk with people from other countries. We have not enough money to visit America, for example," he says in an e-mail interview.

But e-mail is a "quick and very personal way of information exchange" with people around the globe, he says. Besides messages, he exchanges family photographs with his cyber-friends.

"Usually, I receive a lot of business correspondence. Messages from my cyber-friends always make my postbox more human. I use [a] few minutes while I'm answering them as a short break that helps me to concentrate my mind after returning to work.

"When you write something in the message, you . . . define your own thoughts. (A) written message is clear, much more than spoken."

Although Bashlovkin has made contacts with about 20 people around the world, he has a close friendship with one American.

"With one pen pal from South Carolina, I have established a very good connection and relations. I'd like to meet him. He's [a] very interesting man with [a] brilliant sense of humor."

The Russian says cyber-friendships transcend cultural and political barriers.

"People and countries have differences," he says. "Does this matter when you talk one-on-one with another person in another country? Differences are placed into our heads and hearts. There are no borders and barriers for people who are using the same ways of thinking, living and acting."

Another Russian, Fakhrullo Kungurov in Samarkand, says he always looks forward to receiving new e-mail messages and learning the latest from his pen pals around the world. With a computer, modem and telephone line, he corresponds regularly with a half dozen or so people.

When he talks by e-mail, he says, "I don't feel any cultural and political barriers. I feel free to talk about everything.

"Making pen pals around the world gives you new friends. You can be in his country and keep in mind that you have a friend here, even if you will not meet him."

Finding people to correspond with is no problem. An e-mailer found the Russians by looking for personal web sites in other countries. There are also international pen pal web sites containing names and addresses.

But as fun, modern and pervasive as e-mail seems to be in business and in the home, the technology is already dated, says Tim Pry, an Internet expert with the Cooperative Extension Service, University of Arkansas.

"It's the communication tool of last month. Real time voice communication over the Internet is the way of the future. Two people can talk now, but they're working to expand it for more people."

Pry says most computers already have the necessary sound card. Voice communication also requires a microphone and a downloaded software program, such as Microsoft Net Meeting or Speak Freely.

The next step beyond voice, says Pry, will be voice and video. However, it requires greater bandwidth than most current telephone lines can carry.

Meanwhile, e-mail is not so bad. Pry believes this technology has revived the art of letter writing, or at least it has created a faster, less formal kind of letter writing.

"Mailing a letter takes too much time and is too slow. Most people want instant gratification. You can e-mail someone around the globe and have a response back within minutes."