I'm addicted to e-mail. I like connecting with family and friends at computers across the world. However, I don't like cutesy forwards and chain letters or porn messages that somehow creep into my inbox. I like the power of rapid, customizable communication, and I detest spam notifying me of the latest hot stock pick. There's no doubt that e-mail is revolutionary, but its value as a medium for communication is diminishing. We have to help save e-mail.

I started thinking critically about e-mail last week when I was tricked by a web service called Doostang. Basically, Doostang is a professional networking website - think Facebook for people who wear suits all day. I punched in my e-mail login info to search for friends already using the service, and I had some success. Unfortunately, as a parting gift, Doostang sent a friend request to everyone in my address book, including professors, business contacts and people I haven't spoken to in years. Needless to say, the incident caused a surprising amount of embarrassment and hassle. E-mail culture wasn't so complicated in the old days.

I started e-mailing when I was about 8 years old. At the time America Online was king and the "You've got mail" sound byte characterized how e-mail was cool and stress free. I e-mailed a few friends and family members who live abroad. Messages were easy to manage, and the medium was at its purest. Fewer viruses and spam messages littered the electronic landscape, and it was a pleasant surprise to have a new message, not a chore.

Then e-mail traffic started to escalate. More and more unwanted weekly e-newsletters started to circulate. At the same time, a variety of services like electronic banking statements became commonplace, making day-to-day tasks more efficient. As the use of e-mail to better organize our lives and communities increased, so did spam. E-mail was in purgatory.

Now, e-mail is nearly a necessity, especially for college students. Professors use it to distribute information about classes, and the University sends campus crime alerts electronically. We communicate with our parents, strangers and each other via computers. With the advent of the Blackberry, e-mail is accessible instantaneously anytime, anywhere. We spend hours every week managing our inboxes when we could be doing other things. Now e-mail can be a bigger headache than love or grades, causing a queasy Pavlovian response upon every login.

Two promises of early e-mail were efficiency and the immediate distribution of critical information. Now there's so much e-mail to manage, there's little time for sending personal letters, and it's painfully easy to miss a critical, time-sensitive message. In addition, lots of e-mail doesn't add much value to our collective consciousness. In fact, as I write this column, my inbox has exploded with more than a dozen subject-line-only e-mails about a stray cat hanging around the Oxford and Hill area. Though amusing, chatter about cats makes life unnecessarily saturated with information and that much harder.

That being said, I think there are a few ways to bring e-mail back to being a helpful and pleasant form of communication. For starters, focusing on the content of e-mails and crafting clear, concise messages is a top priority. Maybe it would be worth it to read dozens of e-mails a day if the subject matter was interesting and relevant. Even more thoughtful subject lines would help. On the reader's end, free alternatives like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird are user-friendly upgrades from the University's webmail service that streamline mail management.

Beyond that, trying to keep e-mail to manageable levels is a shared responsibility. We could all strive to spend more time communicating face-to-face (or webcam-to-webcam) and use text messages for casual, quick notes instead of e-mail. It wouldn't be archaic to write a letter every now and then either. We can revert to using e-mail to fulfill its original objective - making life easier. It might take a marginal amount of extra effort with each message, but it could save us all a lot of headaches in the long run.

Neil Tambe can be reached at ntambe@umich.edu.