“Fixing” Email

(reposted from one of my defunct projects)

I see a lot of startups trying to address the “problems” of email. I have no doubt that the majority of them offer their clients a valuable, effective service, but I have to wonder why they’re needed.

“Email is broken” is something I read/hear a lot. That may be the case, businesses are certainly making revenue off the concept. Filtering services have been set up, prioritised inboxes, even applications to bounce mails to black holes if they’re not important, or can’t be dealt with in a timely manner.

Email been around for some 40 odd years now, and its still in use in roughly the same format it has been since its creation. Email was the next generation of communication from paper letters. No more licking foul tasting adhesive strips to fire off a quick missive. Email freed us from the physical, and allowed us to communicate with digital letters with ease. Electronic mail made simple and universal at the speed of electrons.

What went wrong? Why is email broken now? Why has removing the need for the physical envelope placed more of a burden on our time?

I very rarely send a letter. Mostly my mail is restricted to shovelling more funds at greeting cards companies. In my experience, however, Email has been a victim of its own success.

By making it so easy and quick to communicate, email has massively increased the volume of communication. I can’t really see anyone using the Penny Post to fire off a quick message saying “LAWL PWNED” (possibly because they’d have been quietly removed to a sanatorium if they did). This incredibly short form email is nearly analogous to instant messaging, and is illustrative of just how much of a burden an email address could place on your time. Near-instant communication places an expectation of a near-instant response. Ready access creates the expectation of swift access. Further, I’m sure I’m not alone in having a number of email addresses. In effect, I’m creating my own meta filters. Different contacts get different addresses. It does mean, however that I have a number of addresses to manage, and that I can be reached via. Contrasted with the physical address (of which most of us possess only one) that’s a much bigger communication footprint. Even if we have mail delivered to a business address, there are post rooms dedicated to receiving and handling physical mails for businesses.

Looking at those businesses that are tackling the problems with email as a rule, they are all trying to re-introduce some form of electronic barrier. They filter mail based on type, sender, content etc. In effect, they try to recreate some of the qualities of physical mail to limit the time and resources spent on dealing with incoming communication. We try to replicate mail rooms on a micro level by setting up rules on our inboxes. Our mail clients are individual PAs. We are trying to free ourselves from freedom.

Email has freed us from the physical, certainly. Unfortunately in doing so, it’s freed us from restriction of communication. I would contend, therefore, that email is far from broken. Email is doing exactly what it was supposed to, efficiently, effectively, and at speed. The brokenness lies in our own use of it, and in our expectations of it. That perceptual, rather than practical issue is what we’ll have to make a change to if we’re ever to “fix” email.