"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." You still can

"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." You still can't. As you point out, the vast majority of people have one, but a significant number still doesn't, for various reasons. Email would be less common among, for example, people in rural areas, the elderly, and those who just aren't very interested in this internet thing. Yet all those people usually have phones and can be reached by snail mail... so email still hasn't completely caught up yet. Also, this prediction is from 1985. It turned out to be completely wrong, but it would have taken quite a visionary to predict the situation in 2010. It wouldn't have been hard to predict in 1985 that future computers would be faster and have more memory and storage space, but going from "64K in a breadbox" to gigabytes of storage, ubiquitous and cheap computers (often embedded in other technology), wireless connections, etc, would have required quite a mental leap. (The point being, that in the 1985 environment, email wouldn't have made a lot of sense, while in 2010 it does. Or actually some people seem to think it's becoming old-fashioned... but that's a different story.)