The Decline and Fall of E-Mail
28th November 2010
Cringely takes a look from 10,000 feet.
What’s happening to e-mail is complex but comes down to changing contexts and competing media. Back in 1992 communication for me meant e-mail (which at that time for me was cc:mail, MCI Mail, and Internet mail), snail mail, Usenet newsgroups, bulletin board systems like The WELL, telephone, and fax. Today the mix has changed almost completely and I have Internet mail, snail mail, SMS, various chat systems (Skype, iChat, ICQ, etc.), twitter, Facebook and other social networks, and the big one for me — WordPress. BBS’s are gone as are proprietary e-mail systems, my fax machine was thrown-away long ago and Usenet has been subsumed into the Internet as a whole.
Then spam spoiled it all. I hate spam. I feel betrayed by spam and the spam industry. Remember those proposals to put an ISP postage charge on e-mails to eliminate spam? Those proposals failed because it looked too much like a restriction of speech or a violation of net neutrality, but I wish it had worked. I’d gladly pay a couple bucks per month to be truly spam-free.
Facebook has brought for non-professional writers in us the same e-mail effect I saw when I jumped to WordPress: every wall or chat posting makes unnecessary at least one e-mail, maybe several.