7 ms·
Ask HN: Is email "modern" technology?
During a presentation at work recently, I made an offhand comment about email being "semi-modern," along the lines of the telephone. I got a relatively strong (negative) reaction to what I thought was a pretty benign comment.
I've noticed that people seem intimidated by the rush of new technologies coming out recently, especially web 2.0 stuff. These are people who are considered technologically proficient (although perhaps not necessarily by readers of this forum).
I think it's pretty obvious and probably also empirically provable that email can be considered relatively primitive compared to newer forms of communication. What do you think?
- brk 17y agoI think it's pretty obvious and probably also empirically provable that email can be considered relatively primitive compared to newer forms of communication. Care to elaborate? What modern form of communication allows you to: -Send a message using a basic plain text format -Send a message using an advanced layout (while also offering a method for people who just want a plain text message to see that version) -Attach a document, drawing or file to your message -Send a message to one or several recipients simultaneously at your choosing -Participate in this communications infrastructure with your own servers (I think this last one is particularly significant). I don't think that people are "intimidated" by some of the new technologies, they just fail to see the benefit or improvement. You could also say that the majority of these things are not really new "technologies", but moreso new presentation layers over basically "primitive" technologies.
- tokenadult 17y agoI still think Michael Kinsley had it best, explaining email in a television interview back when only a minority of Americans had email (when I already did have email): "Email has most of the advantages of the telephone, and most of the advantages of postal mail, and few of the disadvantages of either." Email is wonderful. Here I am on a Web-based discussion forum (HN is not email), but I still use email for a LOT of communication, and I wish I could use it for more. I think it's pretty obvious and probably also empirically provable that email can be considered relatively primitive compared to newer forms of communication. Please show your work and give the empirical proof. I'd be glad to learn something from you.
- varaon 17y agoConsider that most Web 2.0 forms of communication (i.e. Twitter, Facebook and the like) are still closed gardens. Yes, they have APIs, but they still hold the keys and own the technology. Anyone can set up an email server and have it talk to anyone else.
- alanthonyc 17y agoThis is probably the most relevant comment to the discussion I was trying to raise. I don't necessarily agree though. Almost anyone, especially any IT department, has the technical knowledge to set up a wiki, for instance. Sites like yammer.com make setting up a private microblog platform within anyone's reach. And yes, even my mom has a Facebook account. At one of my clients, the issue they are having is more related to the cultural acceptance of using the wiki than the technical difficulties in setting it up. Anyone visiting this site knows how wikis work and for what uses they can be applied. To the general population, "wiki" is just another weird internet word.
- alanthonyc 17y agoMaybe my wording is a little too antagonistic. “Primitive” is a strong word, but I simply meant it in a relative sense: there are other methods more modern. Also, to brk's point, I am in no way advocating replacing email. Email didn't replace the telephone, handwritten notes or face-to-face speech, it augmented them. But can it really be argued that email is the most modern form of communication? Every innovation up to this point has reached critical mass, and then subsequently been supplanted in less time than the previous. Basic writing took millenia, the printing press took centuries, the telephone took decades. At this point, email is a few decades old and already mainstream. It's due to be overtaken by the latest new thing, of which there are multiple candidates: * Discussion Forums * Instant Messaging * Wikis * News Aggregation Sites * Real-Time Information Streams Again, let me emphasize that I do not think email should be replaced. But to a lot of people, email is the be-all and end-all of modern communications. This is hardly the case. It's more like the beginning, the starting point and the basis. There are plenty of sophisticated tools at hand that can be used to solve specific problems which email is ill-suited to address.
- tokenadult 17y agoThere are plenty of sophisticated tools at hand that can be used to solve specific problems which email is ill-suited to address. I'm still politely requesting more specifics here.
- alanthonyc 17y agoExample 1 – To have a public debate about the relative merits of email as a form of communication versus other forms, both older and newer: Discussion Forum. Example 2 – Assume a decision was made to design a new system to supplant email. A metaphor for a whiteboard would be ideal to have multiple people involved in the design of that system: A Wiki Example 3 – Assume a mission critical time sensitive deployment of a new system. Involved parties are geographically distant, but need to be kept up to date on a minute-by-minute basis: Yammer (private microblog platform) Each of these can be solved using email, but the tools I've outlined are much better at performing each task. I'm not sure if you're making me jump through these hoops just for the sake of it or if these examples really are not obvious. If someone like yourself, for whom I can only assume these tools are familiar, don't see these benefits, then it's no wonder that the general population don't see their utility either.
- csbartus 17y agoemail is obsolete: too slow for communication + too weak for storage + too insecure for id management