There are trends and counter-trends... email inboxes got too full so people invented Slack (and clones like Teams). Just as these are getting decent adoption, I

There are trends and counter-trends... email inboxes got too full so people invented Slack (and clones like Teams). Just as these are getting decent adoption, I'm reading e-mail newsletters are getting more popular again. Really? USETNET, which Karl's post mentions, was a fantastic place to go, because of the "pull" principle: you go there when you want to engage, not as distraction when you would like to focus on something else (email, Twitter). (We also had local groups in our university labs for social and technical interactions. This avoids the spam issues.) Then there is the social element. On Slashdot, HN or Reddit, I don't recognize names (PG and RMS aside), but in newsgroups like comp.ai.nat-lang, comp.std.c or comp.compilers I felt I knew a small but committed crowd of regulars (and their views) after few months.