In a world where six-month old Web sites are considered mature and two-year old computers are over the hill, it might come as a surprise to find a 30-year-old technology that isn’t showing its age. E-mail will soon celebrate its 30th birthday and no, that’s not a misprint.
Although most of us haven’t been using it for nearly that long, the technology for sending text messages from one computer to another was invented three decades ago. What began in the last few months of 1971 as a simple experiment to test a budding computer network has evolved into nothing less than a communications revolution.
Ray Tomlinson isn’t nearly the household name that Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Alva Edison have become. But when Tomlinson dreamed up e-mail, he combined telephones and electricity in a way those better known inventors couldn’t have imagined.
In a recent interview with CNet’s News.com, Tomlinson said he dreamed up e-mail while trying to find practical uses for the government-funded computer network that would eventually evolve into the Internet. The research scientist doesn’t remember the exact date or text of his first message. But in the decades since he sent it, his creation has grown beyond a mere use of the Internet to become the principle reason for its popularity.
About 87 million Americans are using e-mail, according to estimates by Jupiter Research. For a little perspective, that makes e-mail more popular than smoking, owning a home or earning a college degree. The cost and complexity of computers still dissuade millions of lower-income Americans from signing on, but public terminals in schools and libraries are making the medium nearly as accessible as the traditional mail system.
Simple technology
One reason e-mail has aged so well is that it’s decidedly low tech. While it’s possible to send e-mail on personal “stationery” with HTML-coded pages and embedded video, the vast majority of messages are still sent as plain text. A 10-year-old computer might not be able to run a single piece of software on the shelves of your local electronics store, but it can still be used to communicate with people around the world.
The reasons for e-mail’s popularity are clear: It’s fast, easy and cheap. It’s also safe, an attribute that didn’t seem to be worth much before envelopes full of anthrax started arriving in the mail. We used to worry about e-mail viruses, but those fears seem silly compared to the paranoia now associated with tearing open an old-fashioned letter.
As Internet use became widespread in the mid-1990s, some observers suggested e-mail was bringing about a renaissance of letter-writing in popular culture. But the formal contrivances and literate style of a proper letter never quite translated to the digital age. The convenience and speed of e-mail seem custom-made for slapdash notes, hastily typed and fired into the ether without so much as a spell check. E-mail has succeeded because, at its core, it’s a selfish medium. It offers a way to communicate whenever you wish in a setting free from all varieties of social pressure, including the need for proper clothing.
Providing anonymity
If you don’t really want to talk to someone, send him an e-mail. And if you think you have something so important to say that everyone you know should hear it, you can do that too so long as you have their e-mail addresses.
E-mail also gave anonymity a passport, allowing people to spread messages around the world without so much as a return address. This element spawned a new breed of annoyances, including computer viruses and the unsolicited commercial messages we’ve come to call spam. But it also allows a freer form of speech than the world has ever known, particularly in countries where saying the wrong thing can lead to a lifetime behind bars.
So will we still be using e-mail in another 30 years? Voice and video messaging will have more flash, but there’s something about the written word that has a hold on humanity. I suspect e-mail will still sound like a good idea long after we’ve grown tired of folding up pieces of paper and sending them around the world in planes and little white trucks.
To contact syndicated columnist Joe Salkowski, you can e-mail him at [email protected] or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services, Inc., 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60611.
