Why do heads of state not communicate by email nowadays? Heck, you can't even get many (US) government agencies - e.g. the IRS - to use email.

A reasonable question. My speculation is that they did not want any records. Many of my academic colleagues avoid email and only want to phone or talk in person, for that reason...

Its possible they did do something like that at some point. Teleprinters were a thing since the mid-1800's and could be used that way.

My theory is that politicians must be neurotically extroverted, and that extroverts find chat unsatisfying. (70% of communication is alleged to be nonverbal).

A phone call is much more information-dense than online chat. In 5 minutes of a phone call I can fit as much info as in half an hour of online chatting. Just sayin.

You are projecting your present day experience to the past. That is not a good idea in history.

I'm guessing that neither one knew how to type. Plus, as stated elsewhere, Teletypes, especially those of that era, were extremely noisy.

Because emojis hadn't been invented. (More seriously: because quickly written raw text is absolutely terrible at conveying important non-verbal cues) In 2020 we still do important business via video conferencing for exactly this reason.

They did use telegram. Long letter-like messages though.

@paul what records are they trying to avoid?

@AzorAhai--hehim, based on my academic colleagues' behavior about much more innocuous things, they might have been wanting to avoid having records of discussion of various contingencies, plans that might entail loss of lives (even for fewer lives lost later). For example, since the Enigma was broken, they had infomation ... that would have save some lives in the short term, but lost more long-term due to the Nazis realizing their code was broken... Conflict-y stuff... that might not fly well publicly, even later ...

@paul haha no, I meant what do your colleagues need to avoid keeping records of?

@GorttheRobot They had, though :-)

Maybe more accurate to say emojis weren't widely adopted. :-) (And not nitpick that emojis aren't emoticons :-P )

Why did George Washington not take the airports?

@Obie2.0 Obviously "online chat" is a massive anachronism, but the actual question itself (why they didn't stick to the existing technological methods of sending text) is perfectly valid

@Polygnome: Even if I believe that you are being truthful about your information dense phone call experience, that's you. In my experience, it's just the opposite: I waste a lot of time holding the line while the other party looks up stuff or thinks about things, and vice versa. E.g. a recent "conversation" that could have been handled with a 1 paragraph email and confirmation reply turned into over an hour of phone calls, most of that time spend waiting for the other person to look up stuff.

@jamesqf Depends on the nature of the conversation, I guess. But I don't see how chatting makes this any faster. You write something, the other person had to look something up. They answer. You "waste" the same amount of time waiting for them to look stuff up, no matter if you are on the phone or chatting. If that is stuff that blocks you, you ain't going to be any faster. Chat/Email is great for everything asynchronous. If you have a query and don't need an answer right away. But for constant back-and-forth like in a conversation, my experience is that chat/email is way slower than calls.

@AzorAhai--hehim, If you ever become famous, you can expect people to dig up your past. And they will judge you by the moral/ethical/social conventions of the day when the record comes to light, not by the conventions of the day when it was recorded. Even the respect and compassion that you show some individual today could become a liability if that person becomes a pariah tomorrow. (Oh My **! Don't you realize that he once *smiled at Charles Manson? And you're still going to vote for him? What is wrong with you??!!)

@SolomonSlow I don't really understand why you've said this to me.

@AzorAhai--hehim, you asked Paul Garrett what records his academic colleagues might wish to avoid creating. I don't know Paul Garrett, I don't know his colleagues, I know I'm intruding in the conversation, but I couldn't help myself from stepping in to say that there are some people in the world who hope to become wealthy/powerful/famous some day. And, some of those people probably worry about what traces they leave today in the public record that might be useful to somebody who wants to bring them down in the future. And, some of them probably realize that any exposure is risky.

@SolomonSlow You're saying you avoid making a record of your praise for anyone in case they turn out to be a mass murder? That is a paranoid overreaction.