I think the norms follow from quite ancient communication expectations. If someone in your village sends their child with a request, you can say no, but you can’t just ignore it. Acknowledgement is a near-requirement for communication to have actually happened.
What has changed is the number of people who expect to communicate with you, and the ease of doing so. Which leads to a lot of things that look like communication, but aren’t. e-mails run the gamut from personal messages from a close friend or relative (which you may damage the relationship by failing to respond appropriately, but which you can negotiate expectations over time) to automated spam which you probably automatically discard.
The ones in-between, from strangers or distant acquaintances are the tricky ones. You don’t necessarily owe them anything, but they might have something useful to say, and a few of them might turn into closer friends. So you have to decide how much to invest, from a boilerplate “thanks for the e-mail, I probably won’t have time to read it thoroughly.” to an actual thoughtful engagement.
Celebrities have had to deal with this by mail (and telegram) for a century. Some have hired people to respond for them. Some are famous for personal responses. Some are black holes. There is reputational impact to those choices, but they’re all acceptable.
I think the norms follow from quite ancient communication expectations. If someone in your village sends their child with a request, you can say no, but you can’t just ignore it. Acknowledgement is a near-requirement for communication to have actually happened.
What has changed is the number of people who expect to communicate with you, and the ease of doing so. Which leads to a lot of things that look like communication, but aren’t. e-mails run the gamut from personal messages from a close friend or relative (which you may damage the relationship by failing to respond appropriately, but which you can negotiate expectations over time) to automated spam which you probably automatically discard.
The ones in-between, from strangers or distant acquaintances are the tricky ones. You don’t necessarily owe them anything, but they might have something useful to say, and a few of them might turn into closer friends. So you have to decide how much to invest, from a boilerplate “thanks for the e-mail, I probably won’t have time to read it thoroughly.” to an actual thoughtful engagement.
Celebrities have had to deal with this by mail (and telegram) for a century. Some have hired people to respond for them. Some are famous for personal responses. Some are black holes. There is reputational impact to those choices, but they’re all acceptable.