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.