« A doozy! | Main | Big Brother »

July 23, 2004

Ubiquitous Demise - I don't think so

Earlier today, Matt Blumberg of Return Path, posted this discourse on the "state of email" in response to the following opinion column by Mark Hall of Computerworld.

Interesting article and response. Mark declares the "End of Email" - based mostly on the rising inconvenience and hassles that come with using email. Namely, spam, corporate privacy, virus and other security issues.

He additionally contends that just as personal computers and other core technology that evolved and collectively allowed email to be born to us - and ultimately supplanted the poor "selectric typewriter" of yore - IM and other technologies will do the same to email.

My first thought is that there have been numerous predictions throughout history, many proving to be ridiculous in hindsight.

• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olsen, founder of Digital, 1977

• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, Chairman, IBM, 1943

• "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

• "The 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union internal memo, 1876
  

Will Mark Hall be the next to make the list?

Email is a particularly easy thing to pick on. I'm not sure that anyone has ever been willing to actually declare it a "killer app" - yet I believe it to be so.

Email nestles comfortably in the spectrum of human communication. Not quite a phone conversation, it is more than an Instant Message or a post-it note. Despite the costs of email - hard costs of Internet access, server hosting, etc. as well as soft costs of time spent filtering out irrelevant messages and responding to the many emails I receive - it is difficult to imagine managing without it.

While I agree that IM has an important place in the communication spectrum, I can't see it replacing email outright. For one thing, Instant Messages are only good when the other person is there. Still, one could imagine the IM infrastructure replacing that of emails - say storing IM's that you missed for you, so you can read them when you return, in chronological order. Then they might add a way for you to compose multiple emails, send immediately to one or more recipients - but wouldn't that still be email then?

Is the "End of Email" really just the end of email's current technical facilitation? That I might agree with - but the mechanics of communication - what email really is to me - that I don't see an end to.

Matt provides a compelling rebuttal - mostly based upon popularity metrics that show positive trends for email. List subscriptions for well-managed, content rich offerings are prosperous. Many businesses in the "email space" continue to find and mine niche opportunities in email.

Anecdotal evidence abounds as well - just ask any business professional if they can live without their email. In line at Starbucks this morning, the fellow behind me is on his cell phone. I didn't intentionally hear his conversation, but I do hear him say "... hey, did you see that email from Chris? Yeah that one, just forward that to everybody - it settles this..." or something to that effect. There are millions just like them - dependant to ludicrous degrees on email.

Finally, my wife Joie - "was" a technophobe. Aside from some collegiate course work where she was essentially forced to use computers, she's always avoided them. Over the past several years I'd often profess the benefits of various types of technology - including email. Finally, last year I set up an email account for her and convinced her to give it a whirl. As a stay at home Mom for the past several years, she found it immediately impacted her ability to plan, communicate, and connect with the "mommy network". In short order - several weeks - I was fielding urgent phone calls during the day for tech support. "Help, I can't get my email!". A good case study in many ways, though not empirical, I can certainly state that she's not been deterred in the least by spam, viri or the like.

Posted by gcrgcr at July 23, 2004 11:19 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.tombartel.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/9

Comments

Post a comment