July 23 - Email is Dead

Writing a letter is a habit. Though I have no evidence, it seems to me that in ages past, literate people wrote letters drastically more often than today. That habit has evidently been lost. I have not written a letter since I was forced (like just about every kid of my generation) to write a Thank You note to my grandparents. By my generation, the habit was lost. Looking at my parents, I'd say the habit is lost with them, too. Perhaps they write a family update at Christmas, but not much beyond that. Other communication mediums are far more convenient. Most probably it was the telephone that destroyed casual letter writing.

While I never write letters, I do write emails frequently. Several times per day. Email is possibly the most valuable communications medium I have. I practically earn my living with it. Today, on Slashdot, there is a headline that says, "Kids Say Email is Dead." Blink. You may have missed it. Nearly every kid with a cell phone is straining their thumbs frantically keying messages (nearly meaningless to me) and sending via text-messaging, 21st century paging on cell phones. Many of these kids send thousands of messages per month.

I maybe send ten text messages per month. But I see that growing. I don't see email declining any time soon, but text-messaging has value. For instance, when I am in a meeting, to place a call to get a quick bit of information would be the height of unhidable rudeness. I can pretty un-obtrusively ask for via text-messaging, though. Another for instance: I may want to carry on a conversation with someone, but not give it my full attention. Text messaging makes this very possible because conversation over this medium are extremely forgiving of long pauses. Conversely, this is very useful to get at least some of the attention of an otherwise unavailable, very busy person. Further, I can simultaneously carry on separate conversations with several different people.

While texting, for me, is still limited in scope, I use something very similar in preference to email quite a bit. This is instant messaging. Personally, I use Skype as I also use their VoIP services and the integration is nice. Instant messaging is a simple application that gives you nearly instant communication with anyone you know that also uses the application. All of the attributes mentioned above for texting apply here with the added bonus that you get to use a real keyboard and proper grammar if you choose. The communication is far more rich, in my opinion.

Oddly enough, this is something I have been doing for 25 years or so. Way back then, I was a quite active user of bulletin board systems and "gweeped" (what we called instant messaging) quite often. Then the internet entered my life and that went away for 10 years or so. What we have today is not so different. The main thing I see that is interesting about this is that they appear to have evolved independently.

Anyway, email probably is dying as a primary communication medium. Young professionals use texting amongst themselves to a degree I probably never will. I know one thing, email will live with me for a while longer because my thumbs simply do not have eloquence.