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It's Time to Give Up on Email

theatlantic.com

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Re: It's Time to Give Up on Email

#11

Post by hooverd »

tptacek wrote: post #10
hooverd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as? I just can't think of another technology that facilitates the async behavior of email messages. I know some businesses just use WhatsApp but I don't love it. Maybe we would mandate everyone uses Microsoft Teams.

I talk to friends on Slack, Messenger, Signal, and WhatsApp. I virtually never talk to someone I actually know on email, a trend that started in ~2014 when I discovered Slack. I do still use email! But only for transactional stuff, like FOIA requests or scheduling local government meetings.

Ah ok, that tracks with my email usage too. I also use it for more official communications. Maybe this should be titled "It's Time to Give Up on Email [for socializing]", lol.

Re: It's Time to Give Up on Email

#12

Post by mpldr »

h2odragon wrote: post #2

> Email technology wasn’t owned by someone in particular, so anyone could use it. That fact alone should have been foreboding. So, roughly, "email is another example of the disasters of public standards and the lack of proper commercial stewardship." As we'd say in usenet days; plonk

Yes, we must lock down everything and make it fully proprietary. Imagine having interoperable systems without vendor lock in!

Re: It's Time to Give Up on Email

#13

Post by h2odragon »

mpldr wrote: post #12
h2odragon wrote: post #2

> Email technology wasn’t owned by someone in particular, so anyone could use it. That fact alone should have been foreboding. So, roughly, "email is another example of the disasters of public standards and the lack of proper commercial stewardship." As we'd say in usenet days; plonk

Yes, we must lock down everything and make it fully proprietary. Imagine having interoperable systems without vendor lock in!

Why, there would be no where to send the invoices... the disorder, the horror.

Re: It's Time to Give Up on Email

#14

Post by stonogo »

tptacek wrote: post #7
stonogo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What commentary would that be? What irony is on display here? Everything in this article applies to literally every communications media available on the internet. As group discourse moves across protocols and platforms, the same problems occur. I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference between "plonk" and "lol blocked".

Right, but Usenet died.

We might have different definitions of 'died.' Approximately a hundred thousand non-spam posts a month in the text heirarchy and hundreds of terabytes a month in the binaries seems like a living system to me. I accept that this might not be enough for others to bother with.

Re: It's Time to Give Up on Email

#15

Post by simonblack »

tptacek wrote: post #7
stonogo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What commentary would that be? What irony is on display here? Everything in this article applies to literally every communications media available on the internet. As group discourse moves across protocols and platforms, the same problems occur. I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference between "plonk" and "lol blocked".

Right, but Usenet died.

Not so fast. I still read about a dozen newsgroups.

Re: It's Time to Give Up on Email

#18

Post by esperent »

Over the past two years I've been working on a business in Vietnam and one of the (many) frustrating things I've had to adjust to is that other businesses don't respond to email here.

It's my automatic response when I need information from a business to check their website for the email address and shoot them a quick email.

What happens in Vietnam when I do this: silence... Unless the business happens to be run or managed be a foreigner too.

All local businesses do list their email address on their website, they just don't seem to respond to it.

The majority of inter-business messaging happens on Zalo, with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp as alternatives.

It's an annoying thing for me to transition to, it just feels wrong. My business email accounts are a permanent record of my business dealings. I can search and find anything I need there in seconds even if it was years ago in a different business than I work on now. Chat apps are not a good replacement.

Re: It's Time to Give Up on Email

#19

Post by nabogh »

We still need to receive the mail somehow. It's analogous to the post of yesteryear.

The issue seems to me that marketing loves to abuse dark patterns and whatnot to sign most people up for a torrent of emails. My partner has thousands of unread emails and most regular people I know would be in a similar boat. We can't expect people to keep an inbox zero level of diligence.

Maybe some better legislation around unsolicited advertisements is needed? I don't want to have to unsubscribe. Don't sign me up in the first place.

Re: It's Time to Give Up on Email

#20

Post by aurareturn »

esperent wrote: post #18

Over the past two years I've been working on a business in Vietnam and one of the (many) frustrating things I've had to adjust to is that other businesses don't respond to email here. It's my automatic response when I need information from a business to check their website for the email address and shoot them a quick email. What happens in Vietnam when I do this: silence... Unless the business happens to be run or ma…

It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers. They don't have a laptop. Therefore, quick messages is the preferred way over writing formal, formatted, long emails.
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