[jegoodwin3]

Actually, back in the 80s, people normally wrote email of about that length, and since gaming was uncommon, had the leisure to read well-written prose from their peers.

Sometime around 2000, busy people started complaining about this practice, and old timers started to hold their tongues. I knew the era was over when my Millennial co-worker one cube away asked me to not interrupt him and IM him instead, since he had to take off his earphones. About the same time, my boss complained about how long my (senior engineer, explaining matters related to the immanent demise of the company...) emails were -- frankly managers were busy and 1-2 sentence ought to explain about this O-ring problem.

Your projection of self-centeredness on the part of your elders is unbecoming and ill-informed. You are merely young.

rms is just old school.

[Normal_gaussian]

I am young. RMS has written a very simple email, well laid out and information dense. There is no external referencing and it is easy to skim read.

I find most "short" messages lack key details, requiring me to either search out more information, request a clarification, or abandon the conversation (due to anticipation of the pain continued communication would cause). This is more time and mentally expensive to me than reading a longer more precise message.

[sanderjd]

To me, this seems to be making two opposite points. One reason to prefer asynchronous interruptions (like IM) to their synchronous counterparts (like out-loud conversation), is so that you have the leisure to deeply read long-form writing (like well-written emails or (hopefully) well-written documentation).

[knughit]

There is no need to insert arbitrary ageism. It just makes you look immature, whatever your age.