COM125 Week 2: Email

Although long touted as the killer app for the internet, electronic mail, or email as it is now commonly called, actually predates the internet as we know it in its current form of the World Wide Web by over 20 years (para 2, Email, n.d.). In 1961, MIT demonstrated the forerunner to email, the Compatible Time-Sharing System. This system allowed multiple users to log in from dial-up remote terminals, and store online files on disk (para 2, Email, n.d.). And so, the first email system began life in 1965 as a way for several users of such a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate (para 2, Email, n.d.).

By 1966, this communication capability was quickly extended to network email, allowing users to pass messages among different computers. And in 1971, email began to take on its current form, when Ray Tomlinson first used the @ sign to separate user names and machine names (para 4, Email, n.d.).

It would be unwise to ignore the influence ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the computer network developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, had over the evolution of modern email, it being the predecessor of the modern Internet (para 1, ARPANET, n.d.). In essence, ARPANET was the world’s first operational packet-switching network (para 1, ARPANET, n.d.), and email’s popularity grew by leaps and bounds because of it. As mentioned earlier, after Ray Tomlinson pioneered the usage of the @ sign in email in 1971, by 1973 75% of the traffic on ARPANET was email (Network Applications, ARPANET, n.d.).

Email is just one of various methods that one can use to send messages over the internet. In essence, e-mail is just that – mail sent electronically, in much the same way as ordinary mail is sent, without the need for postage or a postman. In addition, text is not all that can be sent. Pictures, videos, or any type of file imaginable can be sent via email. Size restrictions apply, of course, though significantly less stringently then before. It is now not uncommon to receive a file over 10MB (email etiquette notwithstanding) and since Internet speeds have been constantly rising over the last few years with the sharp increase of widespread cable services, it is no longer as big an issue as it once was. With the advent of instant messengers like MSN or AIM, the usage of email as a chat device is on the decline, but there still remains many, many applications for email.

The influence of email over the Internet as we know it today is, in a word, enormous. In fact, it is safe to say that email is the main reason many people all over the world log on to the Internet everyday. Be it for the purpose of catching up with family members who are abroad, or exchanging cookie recipes with a fellow cookie enthusiast. And of course let us not forget the massive deluge of corporate emails generated every day in companies of all shapes and sizes.

Email is one of the first, and perhaps the most primitive form of communication over the Internet. It is perhaps the easiest to learn, and countless people have gone online for the first time because of it. Email has also reshaped the way students do work and use the Internet. Gone are the days where project groups have to meet each and every day, since, for example, quick announcements can be made via email. Instant messaging (IMing) does not always work, since everyday scheduling conflicts practically ensure that not everybody can be present at the same time. Therefore, emailing one’s entire group is a much more effective method of keeping everyone informed, and it is also significantly cheaper than calling each member.

In addition, it could be argued that quite a number of applications that are used everyday over the Internet evolved from email. Instant messaging is one such example. Despite, strictly speaking, having evolved from Internet Relay Chat (IRC) (para 3, Instant Messaging, n.d.), instant messaging could have grown out of a need to communicate faster, without the need to repeatedly send email after email. This brings it much closer to the ideal of face-to-face communication, as opposed to, say, having a pen-pal.

Message boards and blogs may well be considered as such. Can a post and a blog entry be seen as an open email to whoever reads it? If email is mail sent over the Internet, posts – whether on a forum or on a blog – can, thus, be seen as an open letter pasted on a noticeboard. Whatever one may be talking about, be it politics, sports, or the environment, such posts can be alluded to sticking a flyer on a wall.

In conclusion, email is not only one of the forerunners to a host of Internet communication methods used today, it is, and remains, a vital and widely used technology that does not appear to be facing extinction any time soon.

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References:

Email. (n.d.). Retrieved January 24th, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email

Advanced Research Project Agency Network. (n.d.). Retrieved January 24th, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

Instant Messaging. (n.d.). Retrieved January 24th, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging