The Internet WorldThe first thing to realize is that the Internet world is part of reality. The people you correspond with on the network are real people with lives, careers, habits and feelings of their own. The things you say online can make you friends or enemies, famous or notorious, included or ostracized. You need to take the electronic part of your life seriously. In particular, you should think and consciously choose how you want to use the network. View email as part of a broader ecology of communication media and genres: telephone conversations, archived logs and newsletters, business meetings, paper mail, voice mail, hallway chats, conferences and conferences, job interviews, visits to other research sites. , and so on – each with their own attributes and strengths. Media relationships will likely change and new genres will likely emerge as technologies evolve, but be sure not to harbor the all-too-common fantasy that one day we will live our lives entirely through electronic channels. This is not true. One can engage in many forms of communication on the Internet: one-on-one electronic correspondence, network discussion groups, web posting, etc. And these interactions can be used in a wide variety of professional activities: sharing raw data, discussing technical standards, collaborating on research projects, searching for references, commenting on draft articles, editing journals , plan meetings and trips, etc. on. However, underlying all of these disparate activities is the activity of establishing and maintaining professional relationships. Electronic communication is useless unless we use it to seek, cultivate, and maintain relationships with other human beings. Unfortunately, existing mechanisms of electronic interactions, by reducing people to abstract codes (like "[email protected]"), it is difficult to keep this deeper dimension of interaction in mind. Yet there's no escaping it: if you're not consciously building relationships, you're probably getting lost. So at the most fundamental level, most of my advice has nothing inherently to do with electronic communication. My real topic is not about (technological) networks but about (professional) networks. Therefore, I will discuss networking generally before describing how email can speed it up. In the past, the only way to learn networking - not just being part of a social network, but having the skills to systematically seek out and become acquainted with new people in the service of professional goals - was to be born into a socially well-connected family or becoming an apprentice to a master of the art.