'Email Is The Cockroach Of The Internet'

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Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the "Quote of the Day." :D

"Email has many benefits as the lowest common denominator for official communications," said Butterfield, but it's "terrible for internal communications," because your conversations are "locked up in your inbox." Butterfield acknowledges that email still has some life left in it, however. He reckons another 30-40 years, in fact, joking, "Email is the cockroach of the Internet!"
 
People were using email for internal communications before the internet was widely available, and that will continue for a long, long time. (I know that because I was a support tech before the internet was even available.) It allows for easily searchable, trackable information and conversations, which isn't available any other way. Email is vital to business dealings everywhere. It isn't going anywhere.
 
It's still useful for queued communications that are important. I'm not sure if that part will ever change. It's also good for being another line of defense, what with most web sites requiring you to confirm by email before your password changes somewhere. You can reinforce your email quite heavily by requiring texts to your phone even before things are checked and such... but that's another matter altogether, as this is discussing applicability with regards to internal business usage.


As far as internal work communications... yeah. It kind of sucks. Like, it's almost in the useless department. At my corporation, they even acknowledge that it has many problems, and almost everyone prefers to simply use the internal instant messaging program because that's the only way things get resolved quickly. There's also a telecommunications program for when IMs aren't effective. Email has its purposes, though. I doubt it will totally fade but... maybe it'll get re-purposed and have less and less presence. Our company is also slowly moving to a one-stop collaborative tool like that Slack thing they're discussing.

Even with me creating Outlook VBA scripts, email is also extremely inflexible in terms of categorization. It's difficult to work with meaningfully. I anticipate the day we replace it with a much more seamless system that does not depend solely on base framework that is "email". Throwing out Outlook in general would be great. >_>
 
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StoleMyOwnCar said:
It's still useful for queued communications that are important. I'm not sure if that part will ever change. It's also good for being another line of defense, what with most web sites requiring you to confirm by email before your password changes somewhere. You can reinforce your email quite heavily by requiring texts to your phone even before things are checked and such... but that's another matter altogether, as this is discussing applicability with regards to internal business usage.


As far as internal work communications... yeah. It kind of sucks. Like, it's almost in the useless department. At my corporation, they even acknowledge that it has many problems, and almost everyone prefers to simply use the internal instant messaging program because that's the only way things get resolved quickly. There's also a telecommunications program for when IMs aren't effective. Email has its purposes, though. I doubt it will totally fade but... maybe it'll get re-purposed and have less and less presence. Our company is also slowly moving to a one-stop collaborative tool like that Slack thing they're discussing.

Even with me creating Outlook VBA scripts, email is also extremely inflexible in terms of categorization. It's difficult to work with meaningfully. I anticipate the day we replace it with a much more seamless system that does not depend solely on base framework that is "email". Throwing out Outlook in general would be great. >_>
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We have an instant message system at my company, but few actually use it. There are a couple, though, that try to push people to use it. The worst is when they send me a message with complicated instructions that will take days to complete, and expect me to just remember it. I usually end up copying it into an email and sending it to myself so I can save it in a searchable format. I despise instant messaging because it doesn't save anything. It's even worse when I get an IM while I'm away from my desk, to come back and see a dozen messages over 5 minutes, an hour ago, for something urgent. I can get emails from my phone, but not instant messages. Email is far more reliable to contact me than IM. IM just doesn't measure up.
 
Well, we have the program so it can be tied to company phones and you can receive messages while on your phone. The program also has an option to where it will archive and keep a history of all of your conversations, from the beginning of time. I usually just search through the history when I need something.

It's not a problem with the medium in your case, it's an issue of technical deficiency of your specific implementation of the medium.

I think email is okay, but I do believe it's going away once we get more and more fluid, advanced, innovative, and seamless collaborative replacements for it.
 
dgingeri said:
We have an instant message system at my company, but few actually use it. There are a couple, though, that try to push people to use it. The worst is when they send me a message with complicated instructions that will take days to complete, and expect me to just remember it. I usually end up copying it into an email and sending it to myself so I can save it in a searchable format. I despise instant messaging because it doesn't save anything. It's even worse when I get an IM while I'm away from my desk, to come back and see a dozen messages over 5 minutes, an hour ago, for something urgent. I can get emails from my phone, but not instant messages. Email is far more reliable to contact me than IM. IM just doesn't measure up.
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Skype for Business (formerly Lync) saves message history in Exchange/Outlook, so it is searchable. Best of both worlds. It also works on mobile devices.
 
dgingeri said:
We have an instant message system at my company, but few actually use it. There are a couple, though, that try to push people to use it. The worst is when they send me a message with complicated instructions that will take days to complete, and expect me to just remember it. I usually end up copying it into an email and sending it to myself so I can save it in a searchable format. I despise instant messaging because it doesn't save anything. It's even worse when I get an IM while I'm away from my desk, to come back and see a dozen messages over 5 minutes, an hour ago, for something urgent. I can get emails from my phone, but not instant messages. Email is far more reliable to contact me than IM. IM just doesn't measure up.
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we use google hangouts and love it. Goes to all our phones as text messages, easy to switch between phone and pc conversations. Lose a phone? Not an issue sign back into hangouts and it loads all your past conversations.

Of course we still use email but for our group we all love hangouts as the easy way to communicate.
 
joblo37pam said:
Skype for Business (formerly Lync) saves message history in Exchange/Outlook, so it is searchable. Best of both worlds. It also works on mobile devices.
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Yes/No, depends on the settings. That feature can be turned on, but it might not be and if users don't have permission to do so then you as a user are SOL.

It is even better when some people in the office have it enabled and others do not.
 
Email is the central communications at my office.
You need something from IT (me) send me an email.
If you call me and leave a voice mail, I get an email with the voice message attached.
You send me a fax, it comes to me as an email.

Plus, all my emails are sync to my phone, so I can get emails, voice mails and faxes even when I'm not at my desk.

Customer that needs support? Send an email to support and you will receive an email with your case number, and support will be notified, via email of course.

Sure sounds like a dead product to me....
 
I wonder what form of communication would replace such a popular medium of communication that is e-mail.
 
I really wonder how journalists get away saying monumentally stupid things. Email is superior to every other intra office form of communication on every possible way.

It can be saved
It can be copied
It can be instantly received on basically any mobile device.
It can be it can be searched
It can be integrated into a ton of software platforms.

There is literally no other means of communication that is as flexible, versatile and useful as email.
 
Email is still the best form of communication for anything "official" or anything that is very wordy. However it is cumbersome for having a conversation. Many companies such as the one I work for use an internal instant messaging service such as XMPP/Jabber for quick correspondence.
 
Steve said:
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the "Quote of the Day." :D

"Email has many benefits as the lowest common denominator for official communications," said Butterfield, but it's "terrible for internal communications," because your conversations are "locked up in your inbox." Butterfield acknowledges that email still has some life left in it, however. He reckons another 30-40 years, in fact, joking, "Email is the cockroach of the Internet!"
Click to expand...

what the heck does "locked in your inbox" even mean? you can't send an email to more than one person I guess?
 
Dekoth-E- said:
I really wonder how journalists get away saying monumentally stupid things. Email is superior to every other intra office form of communication on every possible way.

It can be saved
It can be copied
It can be instantly received on basically any mobile device.
It can be it can be searched
It can be integrated into a ton of software platforms.

There is literally no other means of communication that is as flexible, versatile and useful as email.
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Also, and not for big brother purposes, but for security and business continuity...

It can be easily archived
It can be filtered
It can be monitored...
 
I like email for record sake. IM is good for conversations, but if some information that I may want to refer to later is sent I prefer it sent by email, then I can just go search for it.

Though for a while at work they upgraded our office suite and it broke search capability. You had to install this M$ addon for it to work, but that addon broke desktop file searching, it was retarded. That seems to be fixed now that we moved to Windows 7 though.
 
I can see why would someone complain about it a sense, but I also think that some people use it wrong.
More people need to take the time to read the email, specially if its long, and reply accordingly as if it was a letter.
The idea is not to have a million exchanges but one or two.. I think a lot of people are more into texting mode, you send them a long email (by long I mean by today's standards.. 5-10 sentences) and you yet a partial answer at best, clearly part of the message was lost.
 
ha it's not like we're going to move to text messages, which would pretty much be the same. I miss when you had to get up and go to someone to talk to them, mostly because it's less efficient and wastes time at work :)
 
Email works great for conversations as well, outlook even has a handy feature to keep conversational emails together. IM is trash if you actually know how to use email.
 
Email seems to bug people who are extremely impatient. The kind of people that will email you at an oddball time, then call or text you 15 minutes later, "I sent you an email, why haven't you responded yet?!?"
 
Right. Like physical mail is the cockroach of the physical world? Mail will continue to evolve and become something different over time, but it's not going away, probably ever.

And likening it to a pest species is a really dumb comparison and reeks of some alternate agenda.
 
dgingeri said:
People were using email for internal communications before the internet was widely available, and that will continue for a long, long time. (I know that because I was a support tech before the internet was even available.) It allows for easily searchable, trackable information and conversations, which isn't available any other way. Email is vital to business dealings everywhere. It isn't going anywhere.
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Yup. In fact, I avoid verbal conversations because emails can protect you. Always get it in writing.
 
GotNoRice said:
Email seems to bug people who are extremely impatient. The kind of people that will email you at an oddball time, then call or text you 15 minutes later, "I sent you an email, why haven't you responded yet?!?"
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People like that are annoying.

What on earth makes them think that responding to them is my top priority?

If someone emails or texts me, I'll get back to them. Eventually. Texts might get a reply in a day or two, unless they look important. Emails, probably a little longer on average, again, unless they look important.

I'll answer my phone, if - and only if - I am doing absolutely nothing at the time. If I am in the middle of something, anything, the phonecall will have to wait. I might call back when I am done with what I am doing, if I haven't forgotten about the call by then.

I don't live my life for other people.
 
twonunpackmule said:
Yup. In fact, I avoid verbal conversations because emails can protect you. Always get it in writing.
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yep,

Email has two advantages.

1.) You get it in writing, so you are protected

2.) It sits in your archive, so you can always search and remind yourself.

I have kept every single email received or sent, both work and private, since I first got a a free geocities (@haha.com) in ~1994. (I had email through Fidonet before that, but it wasn't easily saveable)

This way I can always go back and remember things I had forgotten.
 
FLECOM said:
what the heck does "locked in your inbox" even mean? you can't send an email to more than one person I guess?
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That type of phrasing hints at frustration. Frustration from something they know they received but are incapable of finding and managing what they have. This is common among people who are not familiar with how email or email clients work.
 
Email is how business is done. It's how people communicate without all having to have accounts on the same social networks.

It's downright PRIVATE compared to social networks. (aside from your host and the government which you cannot escape these days but it's a world different than plastering sensitive or private communications on systems where the info is highly insecure and used for every kind of marketing purpose imaginable.

It does in fact work on every device known to man. I can get access to the same email account on 3 different carriers of phone, tablets with 3 different OS, many proprietary systems and virtually every desktop or laptop made in the last 20 years.

Email sent, barring it getting spam filtered along the way, can arrive to someone on the opposite side of the world in a few seconds... where THEY can access it on any device they have.

How is that not the BEST form of communication on earth?
 
FlawleZ said:
This is common among people who are not familiar with how email or email clients work.
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Just wait for the second half of the millennial generation to start showing up in droves in the workplace.

They are going to ruin everything :p
 
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