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Email is not "broken". Users are not "broken". Email is simply a method for people to communicate. People are messy. Put two of them together (communication
by aethr 15y ago
Email is not "broken".
Users are not "broken".
Email is simply a method for people to communicate. People are messy. Put two of them together (communication) and the messiness increases exponentially.
Have you ever seen two people arguing, and then it turns out (much later) they were arguing about two completely different things, and they are actually agreeing with each other? This isn't a technology problem, speech isn't "broken".
Have you ever sent a text message, and the other person didn't respond for a few hours and you started to think that they were upset, or something you said was wrong etc. Then it turns out their phone was turned off or they were in a movie theatre. Everything was fine! Does this mean people are "broken"?
The argument going on in this thread is far too black and white to apply to reality. People live in the grey area. Part of being human is managing the messiness of interacting with other people.
- ljoshua 15y agoThanks for the grounding aethr. And toast76 brings up very good points. What I think we've seen recently with all the related articles on HN is a dichotomy of how we are viewing the problem. Most describe it from the perspective of email not fulfilling our technical needs (security, threading, etc.) which is true. There is a lot of work to be done there. I just want to help shed light on a broader problem, where we're shoehorning email into a very difficult problem that is brought on heavily by our own actions.