The Curse of Email

I was at university in 1993 the first time I heard the words ‘electronic mail’.  It was via a phone call with a good friend of mine. I just needed to find the office on campus where I can sign up for an e-mail address. It was a new way to communicate between our university campuses. It was easy — just fill out a simple form, and i had an new and shiny e-mail address. E-mail was UNIX based and the instructions were for a program called Pine. I’d soon discover that this was the first step into a much wider world – The Internet.

There was a magic involved. You could send a message to anyone in the world if they had an e-mail address and you knew what it was. How it worked, I had no idea at the time. When someone sent you an e-mail, they were sharing a part of themselves with you.  It was something to look forward to. As more people learned about e-mail, they learned about the larger Internet, and how to access it. The Internet Service Provider (ISP) became a necessary business. More and more people came online, and the learned the power behind the phrase “you’ve got mail“. They even made a movie about it in 1998. There was an optimism about e-mail back then.

So much has changed. As I write this, I’m avoiding checking my e-mail. I know that other people have injected their expectations into my inbox. I’ll need to respond. Sure there maybe a pleasant surprise within. But more than likely, my inbox is just a collection of spam messages, advertisements, newsletters, and project updates. There’s far too much noise, and not enough signal getting through.  As the number of people and companies that obtain of your e-mail address increases, the dread of receiving email increases greatly. It’s not as elegantly put as Metcalf’s Law, but you get the idea.

Our modern way of life has changed, and e-mail is a reflection of this. E-mail isn’t just about communication anymore. It’s a business tool to deliver your expectations onto others. It’s a to-do list for you managed by others. It’s running record of your life, that you have little control over. It can be overwhelming. What can we do about this? probably nothing.