Comments on: E-mail: Reports of My Demise are Premature http://www.basexblog.com/2009/10/15/e-mail-reports-of-my-demise-are-premature/ Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:00:01 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: A Day Without E-mail » Basex Blog » http://www.basexblog.com/2009/10/15/e-mail-reports-of-my-demise-are-premature/comment-page-1/#comment-2758 A Day Without E-mail » Basex Blog » Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:48:17 +0000 http://www.basexblog.com/?p=1064#comment-2758 [...] In October, a Wall Street Journal writer proclaimed that e-mail’s reign as “king of communications” was over.  Meanwhile more and more e-mail messages are sent every day. (My retort to this is here.) [...] [...] In October, a Wall Street Journal writer proclaimed that e-mail’s reign as “king of communications” was over.  Meanwhile more and more e-mail messages are sent every day. (My retort to this is here.) [...]

]]> By: Leake Little http://www.basexblog.com/2009/10/15/e-mail-reports-of-my-demise-are-premature/comment-page-1/#comment-2682 Leake Little Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:24:28 +0000 http://www.basexblog.com/?p=1064#comment-2682 "Information Overload" is a false issue - we have always been overwhelmed by too much information, for example Times Square, an NFL football game, a block-buster action movie, the library, the rainforest, etc. We have adapted as humans to filter the information that is important to us with our senses and our minds. Much of this is subconscious - as is most of what we call "work". As an analog to the workplace I would argue that most collaborative opportunities are lost with email when workers adapt to too much info by only paying attention to email from their supervisor or boss. In that way email actually may not overload with information but make work more "dumb" and hierarchical because of the "filter" applied by natural adaptation. So I would say that the causal model suggested by Mr. Spira is completely reversed. “Information Overload” is a false issue – we have always been overwhelmed by too much information, for example Times Square, an NFL football game, a block-buster action movie, the library, the rainforest, etc. We have adapted as humans to filter the information that is important to us with our senses and our minds. Much of this is subconscious – as is most of what we call “work”. As an analog to the workplace I would argue that most collaborative opportunities are lost with email when workers adapt to too much info by only paying attention to email from their supervisor or boss. In that way email actually may not overload with information but make work more “dumb” and hierarchical because of the “filter” applied by natural adaptation. So I would say that the causal model suggested by Mr. Spira is completely reversed.

]]> By: Andy Burnette http://www.basexblog.com/2009/10/15/e-mail-reports-of-my-demise-are-premature/comment-page-1/#comment-2522 Andy Burnette Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:23:24 +0000 http://www.basexblog.com/?p=1064#comment-2522 We need to remember all the average users out there. For them, email has passed in usefulness simply due to the overrun of spam and repeated attacks (e.g. viruses, phishing) published in the press. It might be comparable to the home phone prior to the donotcall.gov list. A necessary but annoying service. I handle friends and family for their domains (or on my own) as a nice thing to do. If they get one spam per week, it's a lot. The older and younger among the crowd have the largest need of assistance in this regard. Many of their friends have largely abandoned email largely due to an overwhelming of junk mail on most systems. I spend a good deal of time battling the scurge of spam on behalf of my users (and have had the same email address for a dozen plus years). My own system stats show a 10:1 "junk:real" email content ratio at the incoming gates to my own service. that ratio may vary by 20% depending on the week, but we're still looking at an order of magnitude more junk than useful email. that ratio has varied little over the last five years I've been looking. A good example; I have hotmail, gmail, and yahoo mail accounts which Ido not use as tossaways at all, but alternatives for bank statements or other things that may get bumped by my own rules. I get hundreds of spam emails in each of those accounts every week. I don't know how the average user finds email useful, much less tolerable. My only lament in the grand picture is the fact that invariably, it's "my fault" when a legit email doesn't go through once or twice per month. there's simply no concept of what a bad neighborhood is (e.g. most residential ISPs) on the internet. It's tough to explain, but I've found some of the least willing to clean up their back yards to include large companies who violate basic netiquette rules for mailing lists. Others (newer companies) have been very amenable to correcting problems or issues in their systems upon good technical explanation. Cheers, Andy Burnette We need to remember all the average users out there. For them, email has passed in usefulness simply due to the overrun of spam and repeated attacks (e.g. viruses, phishing) published in the press. It might be comparable to the home phone prior to the donotcall.gov list. A necessary but annoying service.

I handle friends and family for their domains (or on my own) as a nice thing to do. If they get one spam per week, it’s a lot. The older and younger among the crowd have the largest need of assistance in this regard.

Many of their friends have largely abandoned email largely due to an overwhelming of junk mail on most systems. I spend a good deal of time battling the scurge of spam on behalf of my users (and have had the same email address for a dozen plus years). My own system stats show a 10:1 “junk:real” email content ratio at the incoming gates to my own service. that ratio may vary by 20% depending on the week, but we’re still looking at an order of magnitude more junk than useful email. that ratio has varied little over the last five years I’ve been looking.

A good example; I have hotmail, gmail, and yahoo mail accounts which Ido not use as tossaways at all, but alternatives for bank statements or other things that may get bumped by my own rules. I get hundreds of spam emails in each of those accounts every week.

I don’t know how the average user finds email useful, much less tolerable.

My only lament in the grand picture is the fact that invariably, it’s “my fault” when a legit email doesn’t go through once or twice per
month. there’s simply no concept of what a bad neighborhood is (e.g. most residential ISPs) on the internet. It’s tough to explain, but I’ve found some of the least willing to clean up their back yards to include large companies who violate basic netiquette rules for mailing lists. Others (newer companies) have been very amenable to correcting problems or issues in their systems upon good technical explanation.

Cheers,
Andy Burnette

]]> By: Jim Warren http://www.basexblog.com/2009/10/15/e-mail-reports-of-my-demise-are-premature/comment-page-1/#comment-2521 Jim Warren Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:51:54 +0000 http://www.basexblog.com/?p=1064#comment-2521 Email - serves SEVERAL important, IRREPLACEABLE functions: 1.  For better and worse, it's "intrusive"; it arrives at the addressees' mail-servers; if they check their email, there it is! 2.  UNlike this active-contact nature of email ... blogs, net postings, etc., merely sit someplace, waiting for potential recipients to ferret them out.  (Subscriptions to blogs, RSS feeds, etc., are merely variations of email.) 3.  Email is compact to store and easy to index and search (especially if it's plain-text as opposed to having extensively formatted content). 4.  Email generally makes the most efficient use of bandwidth, server capacity, archival storage and indexing systems. 5.  Perhaps most important, compared to the bandwidth and storage hogs of audio and video - email and other text-based content is FAR more efficient and utilitarian for providing information in its most USEFUL form (although less useful for transmitting emotion and motivation).  E.g., information in text-form is ideal for quick scanning, visual and computer-aided searches for specifics, etc., than audio or video will ever be! Email – serves SEVERAL important, IRREPLACEABLE functions:

1.  For better and worse, it’s “intrusive”; it arrives at the
addressees’ mail-servers; if they check their email, there it is!

2.  UNlike this active-contact nature of email … blogs, net
postings, etc., merely sit someplace, waiting for potential
recipients to ferret them out.  (Subscriptions to blogs, RSS feeds,
etc., are merely variations of email.)

3.  Email is compact to store and easy to index and search
(especially if it’s plain-text as opposed to having extensively
formatted content).

4.  Email generally makes the most efficient use of bandwidth, server
capacity, archival storage and indexing systems.

5.  Perhaps most important, compared to the bandwidth and storage
hogs of audio and video – email and other text-based content is FAR
more efficient and utilitarian for providing information in its most
USEFUL form (although less useful for transmitting emotion and
motivation).  E.g., information in text-form is ideal for quick
scanning, visual and computer-aided searches for specifics, etc.,
than audio or video will ever be!

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