My first post from my Nokia N95
“‘E-mail is, like, soooo dead’ is the headline at News.com, where a piece looks at youth attitudes towards communication mediums. A group of teenage internet business entrepreneurs confessed that they really only use email to ‘talk to adults’. Primarily, these folks are using social networks to communicate. ‘More and more, social networks are playing a bigger role on the cell phone. In the last six to nine months, teens in the United States have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to market research firm JupiterResearch, 80 percent of teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging. Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old founder and president of MyYearbook.com, was the lone teen entrepreneur who said she still uses e-mail regularly to keep up with camp friends or business relationships. Still, that usage pales in comparison to her habit of text messaging. She said she sends a thousand text messages a month.’”
If my Dad wants to ask me a quick question, he might send an email, but usually he just sends a text. On the other hand if he wants to ask a more detailed question or send a document then he would definitely email me - for this reason alone I could not work without email! The thing is that we now have such a wide choice of mediums for communicating electronically, rather than one medium being more popular than another, all mediums are being used with a preference for one or another based upon the level of communication/interaction required. So, back to the kids, all this really shows is a preference towards a certain level of detail required for communication with friends, rather than the insinuation that email is not the future…
That said, email must evolve. The basic technology behind email has remained the same for so long now (since 1970’s/early 1980’s) that I’m supprised we’ve not had many problems. Oh, hang on a minute, SPAM!!! The next evolution of the email technology needs to happen, and it needs to solve all spamming issues. A tall order, I know, but we must have the technological skills to be able to solve this now. The biggest problem would be the adoption of the new technology (if it could be designed), since we’re already tied into a huge existing system which would require extensive server and client rebuilds… But it must be possible right?
