Will Email Ever Die?
by Krishna Andavolu
OCTOBER 12, 2009 TAGS:
Nary a decade after its coronation as the lingua franca of technological communication, has email already lost its crown?
A set of pretenders lies in waiting, twittering, tumblring and waving masses of information in real-time, threatening to dethrone the quickly quaint regime of “electronic mail.”
The Internet is no longer something we log onto and off of anymore. If you have mobile phone that accesses the web or use a computer all day at work (and on the weekends and while you’re watching TV), then you are awash in an ocean of connectivity.
The Wall Street Journal takes a shot some of the implications of this sea change in electronic epistles.
From WSJ:
Email won’t leave us too easily. With business communication and other formal ways of reaching out to strangers, person@place.com will still be the primary manner of getting in touch. But can you image a time when getting an email will feel like a summons for jury duty or a heating bill, when you receive more junk in your inbox than actual personal communication? Well, that’s already the case for me.
When new technologies force older methods of communication off the top of the mountain, the deposed rarely disappear forever. Sure I’ve never sent a telegram, but I often send letters even though I use email. Somehow, the desire to communicate, to share oneself or declare, “I am here, (how are you?)” accommodates even the most outdated of methods, each piling atop each other in an ever-compressing lasagna of options.
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This sort of trend watching and pithy prognastication reminds me of a conversation I once had about the death of the dial tone. A casual rap among some friends about when landlines will finally disappear and everyone will only have cell phones.
I noted that since I only use a mobile phone, I never hear a dial tone, and that one day the dial tone may forever disappear from the auditory memory of our culture. These are the vestiges of technological change that interest me. Not the succession of primacy, but what’s lost and what lasts in that change.
There is a pretty fantastic scene in Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation where Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper recreate a dial tone while talking to each other. Will that scene make any sense to 22nd century viewers? Will there be a generation of humans who don’t know what the back of a stamp tastes like? Will there be one that can’t type because voice recognition software will be so advanced. I can’t do calligraphy, but I can write.
Those with a “The king is dead, long live the king,” kind of attitude towards communication are in for a pretty busy time over the next few decades, if the email’s short reign is any indicator. For the rest of us, let’s remember those little actions, those little rituals that might forever be gone. Thumbing through pages of your address book looking for a phone number written with your own hand, marking emails as SPAM, accidentally ‘replying to all’, forwarding inane jokes your weird uncle sends you to your siblings.
Just don't forget to update your Facebook status: “Practicing my cursive”
A set of pretenders lies in waiting, twittering, tumblring and waving masses of information in real-time, threatening to dethrone the quickly quaint regime of “electronic mail.”The Internet is no longer something we log onto and off of anymore. If you have mobile phone that accesses the web or use a computer all day at work (and on the weekends and while you’re watching TV), then you are awash in an ocean of connectivity.
The Wall Street Journal takes a shot some of the implications of this sea change in electronic epistles.
From WSJ:
These new services [twitter, facebook, and the new Google Wave] also make communicating more frequent and informal—more like a blog comment or a throwaway aside, rather than a crafted email sent to one person. No need to spend time writing a long email to your half-dozen closest friends about how your vacation went. Now those friends, if they're interested, can watch it unfold in real time online. Instead of sending a few emails a week to a handful of friends, you can send dozens of messages a day to hundreds of people who know you, or just barely do.
Email won’t leave us too easily. With business communication and other formal ways of reaching out to strangers, person@place.com will still be the primary manner of getting in touch. But can you image a time when getting an email will feel like a summons for jury duty or a heating bill, when you receive more junk in your inbox than actual personal communication? Well, that’s already the case for me.
When new technologies force older methods of communication off the top of the mountain, the deposed rarely disappear forever. Sure I’ve never sent a telegram, but I often send letters even though I use email. Somehow, the desire to communicate, to share oneself or declare, “I am here, (how are you?)” accommodates even the most outdated of methods, each piling atop each other in an ever-compressing lasagna of options.
--
This sort of trend watching and pithy prognastication reminds me of a conversation I once had about the death of the dial tone. A casual rap among some friends about when landlines will finally disappear and everyone will only have cell phones.
I noted that since I only use a mobile phone, I never hear a dial tone, and that one day the dial tone may forever disappear from the auditory memory of our culture. These are the vestiges of technological change that interest me. Not the succession of primacy, but what’s lost and what lasts in that change.
There is a pretty fantastic scene in Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation where Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper recreate a dial tone while talking to each other. Will that scene make any sense to 22nd century viewers? Will there be a generation of humans who don’t know what the back of a stamp tastes like? Will there be one that can’t type because voice recognition software will be so advanced. I can’t do calligraphy, but I can write. Those with a “The king is dead, long live the king,” kind of attitude towards communication are in for a pretty busy time over the next few decades, if the email’s short reign is any indicator. For the rest of us, let’s remember those little actions, those little rituals that might forever be gone. Thumbing through pages of your address book looking for a phone number written with your own hand, marking emails as SPAM, accidentally ‘replying to all’, forwarding inane jokes your weird uncle sends you to your siblings.
Just don't forget to update your Facebook status: “Practicing my cursive”
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