Is Your E-Mail Signature an Information Overshare?
Here is a list of devices from which you, dear readers, claim to send emails: Commodore 64, carrier pigeon, homing pigeon, courier pigeon, fountain pen, rotary phone, hammer and chisel, tin can via the string network, typewriter, abacus, Apollo Guidance Computer, Atari, car phone, shoe phone, 1984 Samsung car phone, difference engine, Game Boy Color, IBM Selectric, pocket rocket, Remington SL3, souped-up TV remote, steam powered digital telegraph, TI-83 Plus, TI-89, toaster, UNIVAC, Coleco Adam computer, Moleskine notebook, Pony Express, Skynet, space-age phonograph and smoke signals. Phew. That’s a lot of retro. And a lot of Wikipediaing for the uninitiated. This data derives from Thursday’s request for edits to that line of text that phone companies so gauchely added to mobile emails: “Sent from my iPhone” and the like. I know I promised you a best-of list, but… Instead, I wrote you an essay breaking down the data! (Bum trade, sorry.) What really caught my attention is that people saw a basic grammar to iPhone signature witticisms. You put a single line of text in front of millions of people, and they start — en masse — to decompose it into playable components. Here’s the general form of the message (explicit stuff is in brackets): Apology/Location/Status [Communication] from [My] [Device] The surface content of the message is that you’re receiving a message from a device. But the type of device conveys an implicit status message, while the presence of the line provides an in-advance apology for any errors as well as an indication you’re mobile out there in the world (or at least not at your computer). Using this general form, we can create a loose taxonomy of the signature edits. (Yes, I know I’m taking this too seriously. Sent from a nerd in data heaven. Expect overthinking.) Sent from a rotary phone. Image: Alexis Madrigal Look, you can check for yourself (I’ve scrubbed the names and backstories): Image: Alexis Madrigal Most people only played with one of the elements. Obviously, the list at the top of this post shows people toying with the idea of the device itself, which (unintentionally or not) also changes the status message that gets delivered. They get all the other benefits of the line, but get to associate with a device that’s “more them.” Others liked to highlight the device’s “deviceness,” as in Nathan Tsoi’s “I typed my text above on a smallish quadrilateral of aluminosilicate glass, a task that would have been unimaginable to most people even a few short years ago. Mistakes are inevitable” or Marcus Himmel’s “Sent from a toy that has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969 when it sent two astronauts to the moon” or Don D in Peoria’s, “Sent from the first great invention of the 21st century.” The other popular way to personalize the signature was to play with the implicit apology. These come in two flavors. The first is to actually apologize with words: Typed with big thumbs on small phone iPhone. […]