E-mail is no more efficient than the telephone or the postal service (1985)

The article, of course, is discussing email as it existed in 1985 - where it indeed did suck. In fact, even in 1993, It was still pretty much impossible to send email to someone and be certain they could receive it. Heck, I'm prepared to suggest that even in 2000, (15 years later) you couldn't be certain that the person you were talking with had an Email address.<p>Today, though, I would suggest that the vast majority of people in North America have an Email Address.<p>Where the article really goes awry is in this paragraph:<p>"Chances are that before a universal e-mail network is ever developed, the whole idea of electronic mail, along with those of teletext and videotex, will have been reduced to the span of a few specialized applications. As a general means of information exchange, the concepts are technologically intriguing. But they are economically naive and, more importantly, no more convenient than the existing alternatives. "<p>Bold prediction, but absolutely, totally, incontrovertibly - wrong.

There's a very good comparable from present day.<p>It's SMS.<p><a href="http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/service/index.cfm/AID/10323" rel="nofollow">http://www.ctia.org/consumer_info/service/index.cfm/AID/1032...</a><p>SMS volume in the US spiked after interoperability between carriers became a reality from 2003 - 2005.<p>Prior to 2003, Europeans and Asians turned their noses down at their American counterparts because "Americans just didn't text."<p>From here:<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-02-text-me-main_x.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-02-text-me-main_x....</a><p>At the time, only "12% of cell phone users in the USA send or receive text messages."<p>And from recent times:<p><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/16/nation/la-na-census-texting16-2009dec16" rel="nofollow">http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/16/nation/la-na-census-...</a>

I think each form of communicating has found its niche. For many things the phone is still the fastest way to get pieces of information, far faster than email or browsing a website. It is especially useful if I don't know what information I'm looking for, and have to bounce a lot of questions back and forth. Of course the phone carries it's own nuances, such as a certain importance to my questions. If I needed to talk to somebody important, I might email them instead, or just call a number I know will go to voicemail to wait for them to have to have free time.<p>Email is nice if I dont really want to talk, or if I need a long response/am speaking of something complicated, or if I don't care when my question is answered.<p>In short:if you need speed, use a phone and talk to somebody alive, if you have something low priority email is good, and I think the postal service is really good for things which absolutely must be read (invitations/legal documents/bills).

As odd as it may sound, the problems discussed in the article were in great part solved by AOL. As annoying as it might have been then, and as laughable as it is now, AOL played an important part in getting the masses into the email world. The business sector may have been different, but email in the social world grew through AOL.

And indeed, the continued existence and use of both the telephone and the postal service demonstrate in an unarguable way that email is not "more efficient" - it's just different.<p>Email, telephone and the postal service are three different modes of communication, each of which is useful for a specific category of communication. To that list, I'd add Twitter, IM, IRC, online forums/BBs/newsgroups, social news sites, talking in person, having a meeting, sleeping together, having a fight, having a meal, going out drinking, etc.<p>Each of those modes of communication is appropriate in a specific set of circumstances for a specific type of communication. None of them is "more efficient" in an absolute sense. It depends on the context.

He does have a point about the incompatible systems. It was only when they all started to speak SMTP that email really started, and it was only when they gave up on their individual implementations, and spoke only SMTP, that email really took off.

E-mail and telephone both cover different situations. Telephone is more personal, contains information about emotions, feelings and context of the talk. If the information is about bidirectional feedback then telephone is much better than E-mail. Since they cover different situations you can't say what the title say.<p>With e-mail you can send spam to thousand of people, you can send e-mail to people that don't know you and that don't care about you. E-mail is like fruit in a tin, telephone is fresh fruit.

Videoconferencing with iPhone is the latest trend in India.