Members of our nominating committee tell us why they chose e-mail, despite its downsides and challenges, to be among their personal “7 Wonders of the Internet.”
Paul Hoffman: Internet mail — Even with horrendous levels of spam, it still remains the most common way for two people to communicate on the Internet. If for no other reason, its resilience makes it a wonder.
Jim Albright: E-mail – In the dozen years I’ve been in the networking field, E-mail has grown from an afterthought (“We have a network anyway, so we might as well put e-mail on it”) to one of, if not the primary way in which people communicate. Many companies consider it to be one of their most mission critical applications. And the proliferation of wireless devices have practically rendered “store and forward” an obsolete term, as users clamor for real time e-mail delivery. Fortunately, the boys down in QoS still don’t see it that way.
George Grenley: E-mail. Fuddy-dud luddite calligraphers notwithstanding, e-mail has done more to promote person-to-person communication that anything since, and maybe even before, the telephone. I now write my poor old Mom, regularly. Lots of people are finding each other and renewing connections that had gone cold over 20, 30, even 50 or 60 years.
Johna Till Johnson: IM. Another example of how online interaction can be richer and better than IRL.
IM combines the immediacy of the phone/in person communication with the editing and control abilities of written communication. The advantage of e-mails (or memos, books, articles, columns, etc) is that they allow the speaker the space and time to craft the right “message”–both in content and tone. To a very great extent, you can control how you come across, because you have the ability to edit yourself. The disadvantage is a lack of immediacy—you can’t tell if you’re boring someone, and you can’t respond instantly to their reactions. In real life, and to a certain extent over the phone, you can tailor your communications to your partner’s.
Tim Greene: E-mail – It is difficult to imagine life without it. Its marvels are well documented but include the ability to carry on a long thread of correspondence over time more thoughtfully than with a phone call with less formality than a letter. It lets you accomplish a lot of reaching out in a short amount of time. E-mail culture has evolved enough that it’s OK to let an e-mail sit for a long time without answering it and it’s still OK to answer later.
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