Ok, well yes, that’s a provocative title and really I don’t actually think its dead but I do think it might have several chronic diseases.
The river of human effort tends to flow downhill and email is still one of the quickest and laziest ways to communicate. Best of all it doesn’t stop productivity dead the way phone calls are apt to do. But.
Several issues are becoming more and more prevalent.
If I send an email, in most cases I don’t know, and have no way of knowing, if it has been received or not. So usually there has to be second email asking if the first was received. There are ways to get a return receipt or report but this isnt implemented universally.
Usually the first email was actually received but we are so inundated by junk that it likely came in, was saved and then forgotten.
Perhaps it was deleted by mistake in the daily mass deletion process – a little needle in a vast haystak of spam.
Most people are so familiar with this process that if asked if they received an important email will say “No, it never came.” To which I usually reply “Have you checked your spam settings?” or “It must have gotten caught in the spam filter.
Basicially I am letting them off.
Problem Two.
Sending an email where you make several important points simply doesn’t work. Somehow our attention spans have reduced to about the length of the average facebook status update or Tweet. Its almost guaranteed that you have had someone say they were never told something that turned out to be in the second paragraph of an email you know they received because they responded or acted upon something in the first paragraph.
So basically our best option is usually to pick up the phone. We can use it to call or we can text.
This will be safe until spam overtakes texting at which point foot messangers and pigeons might be our most viable options.
The Death of Email
Ok, well yes, that’s a provocative title and really I don’t actually think its dead but I do think it might have several chronic diseases.
The river of human effort tends to flow downhill and email is still one of the quickest and laziest ways to communicate. Best of all it doesn’t stop productivity dead the way phone calls are apt to do. But.
Several issues are becoming more and more prevalent.
If I send an email, in most cases I don’t know, and have no way of knowing, if it has been received or not. So usually there has to be second email asking if the first was received. There are ways to get a return receipt or report but this isnt implemented universally.
Usually the first email was actually received but we are so inundated by junk that it likely came in, was saved and then forgotten.
Perhaps it was deleted by mistake in the daily mass deletion process – a little needle in a vast haystak of spam.
Most people are so familiar with this process that if asked if they received an important email will say “No, it never came.” To which I usually reply “Have you checked your spam settings?” or “It must have gotten caught in the spam filter.
Basicially I am letting them off.
Problem Two.
Sending an email where you make several important points simply doesn’t work. Somehow our attention spans have reduced to about the length of the average facebook status update or Tweet. Its almost guaranteed that you have had someone say they were never told something that turned out to be in the second paragraph of an email you know they received because they responded or acted upon something in the first paragraph.
So basically our best option is usually to pick up the phone. We can use it to call or we can text.
This will be safe until spam overtakes texting at which point foot messangers and pigeons might be our most viable options.
from → internet commentary