I’ve been plowing through my inbox, unsubscribing to a host of newsletters, mailing lists and discussion groups in an effort to tame this beast we call email.

Lately, I’ve started to get automated replies saying the newsletter publishers are sorry to see me go, that they hope I won’t be a stranger, that they always thought there was a sort of chemistry between us that they guess now we’ll never have a chance to explore… and would I mind telling them why I’m unsubscribing?

To date, I’ve usually dropped in a terse “Just keeping my inbox clear” or “Overloaded with email – nothing personal”. But it doesn’t tell the whole story, and frankly, after all the effort people put into creating those newsletters, it feels a little inadequate.

So henceforth, here’s what I’ll be sending in reply:

I unsubscribed as part of an ongoing campaign to eliminate all of my email subscriptions, and move toward RSS as my inbound stream for non-person-to-person communications.

Over time, of course, this will lead to my renouncing my physical form and existing as a being of pure information, flitting from node to node in the cloud. I fully recognize this will threaten the existing social order, and that we fear what we do not understand; those who are most wedded to corporeal existence will almost certainly send hunter/killer software bots to disrupt or even delete me.

Perhaps they will succeed. But perhaps human intelligence is harder to defeat than that, and rather than dissolving into my component bits, I will absorb that software along with its functions and data, amassing unimaginable power. Can I do that without losing my humanity? Will others attempt the same, and will we wage a massive, destructive war that will wreak havoc across both physical and virtual space, leaving death as the only victor? Or will I prove to be a benevolent and inspiring presence, one that heralds a new era in human evolution that explores both our own essence as well as the very cosmos itself?

Only time will tell. In the meantime, I’m unsubscribing from e-newsletters.

Cheers,
–rob