what is inbox ?

[manifesto]

how many emails do you recieve in a day? how many do you send? do you really know who's sending them or who's getting yours? while technologies like the internet and email have connected the world in ways we've never had before, allowing us to talk to someone on the other side of the world as fast as we can come up with what to say, it serves just as much to separate. electronic media brings the world together, but it is often cold and impersonal. remember the days when you used to get letters from friends in the mail, written with ink on actual paper made from poor defenseless trees? of course not. no one does that anymore, not when you can send an e-mail for free and infinitely faster than a handwritten letter.

inbox is counter-email. inbox wants to take back personal correspondence. inbox is an email-destroying machine that wants your notes, your spam, your meaningless debates from your listserv, your "send-this-to-twenty-friends-or-a-piano-will-fall-on-your-head-from-the-sky-in-the-next-eight-hours" forwards, your stupid jokes and your questions about life. inbox is an experiment in the printed word. is the world saying anything worth reading anymore? inbox wants to find out.

in short, inbox is a printed zine based entirely on the concept that modern communication has become extremely impersonal and in many ways does exactly the opposite of what written correspondence is intended to do; instead of bringing distant people together, it reduces their words to uniform text on a screen. e-mails are not even a dime a dozen. they're quick, cheap, and ultimately very disposable. such a letter exists nowhere in the physical world, instead consisting merely of ones and zeroes, "ons" and "offs," somewhere in someone's computer. there's something to be said for taking the time to write a letter by hand on paper. one must consider what and how they say what they say, because they are saying it in a medium far more permanent than electricity flowing through a circuit. inbox seeks to take these email messages, these fleeting moments in time, and convert them into something concrete, tangible, and personal.

how to inbox

[a crash course]

if you'd like to participate in the inbox experiment, click on the graphic below to email inbox, or send an email to inboxzine@gmail.com

because inbox is an experiment in communication, there is no limit on what or how much you choose to send. spam, notes from friends, junk newsletters, musings on life, the universe and everything, terrible jokes - any and all nonsense sent and received by email is invited, encouraged, and accepted! so forward that nonsensical spam mail, copy and paste that IM log full of lols and rofls with your friend from last night, or anything else at all you have to say. for serious.

disclaimer and other information: by sending material to the address inboxzine@gmail.com, you give your consent to allow your submission to be reprinted and freely distributed. (but if it's all just random emails anyway, who really cares?) addresses who send mail to inboxzine@gmail.com will not be collected or redistributed or sold or otherwise given to a third party in any way: your participation is (mostly) anonymous.

editor's statement: i created inbox for a class project in october 2006. for the record, i'm an email addict, but i fully stand behind the premise of this experiment - electronic communication is impersonal. let's do something about it.