E-Mail Not Likely to Push Past Paper

Although dozens of congressional staffers have tested positive for anthrax and dozens more are being tested because of paper mail-based attacks, observers do not expect e-mail will displace the more traditional form of correspondence.

"The historical inertia of paper is a juggernaut. It's extremely difficult to change standard forms of interaction with people," says Jason Catlett, president of Green Brook, New Jersey-Junkbusters, which provides assistance services to combat direct marketing intrusions, be they of the electronic or paper variety.

Despite the economic benefits, it has been surprisingly difficult for the government to transfer a lot of its public interaction to e-mail, Catlett says.

"We're still processing billions of checks a day, and that's a very expensive and slow process, compared to electronic transfers," he says. "But consumer habits die very hard."

The anthrax scares may provide impetus for some changes, "but nobody should delude themselves that [e-mail is] going to quickly become pervasive," Catlett says.

"If an entire village falls ill [from anthrax poisoning], then perhaps we will have a substantial change in behavior. But it would have to be something cataclysmic to change the majority behavior, in my opinion," Catlett says.

Paper Staying Put

At the governmental level, spokespersons for California Governor Gray Davis and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) also say their departments were not planning to encourage or require more electronic correspondence as an alternative to paper mail.

"We don't have anything in that regard," says Steve Maviglio, press secretary to Davis.

"We get thousands of e-mails a week. We get as many as 25,000 pieces of conventional mail a week," although e-mail outnumbers paper mail, Maviglio says.

The governor's office has not been the subject of any actual or threatened anthrax attacks, he says.

Jeff Logan, California press secretary for Boxer, says it is too early to tell what measures might be taken in regards to electronic versus paper mail.

"As far as Senator Boxer's office, we are still accepting [paper] mail," Logan says.

Thirty-three members of Boxer's Washington, D.C. staff and the senator herself have had to be tested for anthrax. Results have not come back yet, Logan says.

Analyst Dana Gardner, research director for messaging and collaboration services at the Aberdeen Group in Boston, says he does not see the government mandating e-mail but that businesses, regardless of anthrax threats, can save money by using electronic correspondence for transactions traditionally conducted on paper.

Given the anthrax scares, e-mail does pose obvious safety benefits, Gardner acknowledges.

E-mail, he says, "has its shortcomings, but death and disease are not among them."