History Of Business E-Mail

What is the history of e-mail?

The history of email is very interesting. Most people think that it started in the 80s or the 90s, but it actually went back into the late 60s and 70s. Some of the very first use of email was back in DOS and on very difficult to see screens and old antiquated computer systems. And then email gradually moved into what we have today, but there's been a lot of transitions in that, a lot of variations of it. But email today is basically a function of what we had in the 70s, where everything was very condensed and short yet there were certain spaces to limit things. Email didn't have the HTML and rich text function that we have today, and it was very sort of watered down.

What was the first e-mail system like?

The very first e-mail system that emerged was in the late sixties, early seventies. It was largely not used in the corporate communications that we have today. Indeed email was used more in transmission of data from the standpoint of scientific research and documenting stuff. It wasn't used in corporate communication to pass on knowledge about a project that you were working on, and so forth. It was DOS operated, very binary in it's essence, full of zeros and ones. A lot of it took encryption to interpret it. You didn't have the space and volume in that email system that you have today. It was not really used as we see e-mail today, as a way to communicate, rather it was more of a transmission of data.

How has e-mail changed the workplace?

Email has changed the workplace in many positive ways as emails are a very good efficiency tool in communicating. However, used with poor behaviour like any other technology it can be negative, for example nuclear power can be a great source but used in the wrong hands, nuclear power can be dangerous. I think the same holds true for email. You can use email very constructively and efficiently in the workplace, but with some behaviours it can be somewhat difficult and challenging for people to use, particularly as a receiver.

Why do e-mail suppliers keep offering higher storage capacities?

The reason email suppliers keep offering higher storage capacity is complex because a couple of things are impacting it. Firstly storage has become very cheap. It used to be expensive to store into these places like Iron Mountain and so forth, but now tape backup and storage is relatively cheap so there's not a cost to it, although some companies do store just a ton of stuff and it does become expensive. The other problem is the portal. The delivery of information is so large and our thirst for it is growing. Every time you see something interesting, a picture, a PowerPoint, an Excel, a Word document of some sort ,people want to share it. But we're finding that people are just storing a ton of stuff. They're not actually deleting it or using it and so because of the digital age we can put a ton of stuff in a small space and not really know how much stuff we have. If we had that as paper stuff it might fill this whole room with filing cabinets and you would really see what you would need to clean out. So really those three things have impacted the way we've stored and how much we've stored, and why higher storage is now being offered.

How will e-mail change in the next 5 to 10 years?

Email will change in the next five to ten years in the fact that you will one day basically have one device that operates the lights in your house, opens your garage door, programs the bathtub to start boiling, you know, bringing the water that you need for a bath. Everything will be controlled on one device and that ultimately will be, most likely, a cell phone, from my personal opinion.