COM 125 Assignment 2: E-mail Era

How did e-mail become so revolutionary? E-mail is more than just a type of internet application; it’s a form of communication as well. In fact e-mail was invented in 1965, before the internet itself, and is known as a “crucial tool” leading up to its invention (Wikipedia, 2008). Wikipedia simply defines e-mail as “a store-and-forward method of writing, sending, receiving and saving messages over electronic communication systems” (Wikipedia, 2008). When thinking back, without e-mail where would we be as a culture? Life would be very different, and to many of us, it would be viewed as inconvenient. As a society I believe that we take our time that we have very seriously, and will create a mental time table that we follow to get things done efficiently every day. E-mail allows us to accomplish those tasks.

E-mail started out as a way for many users or a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate (Wikipedia, 2008). Think of this as a place to hold notes of any kind for others to read. We have to note that at this time people were not actually writing things and sending them to other people just yet. Ray Tomlinson created the standard address format, the @ sign, in 1971 (Wikipedia, 2008). After that a transmission was chosen so the e-mail could be passed a long. Such transmissions used at the time were ARPANET, BITNET and NSFNet as well as other hosts (Wikipedia, 2008). With e-mail being provided in a place of business, a person could discover that a lot less running around is done and people were able to work more efficiently if they didn’t have a list of errands to do. More could be accomplished in the time that was given to workers and this was also a new form of non-verbal communication between workers. In many instances it could have been more beneficial to non-verbally communicate with someone else rather than seeing the person face to face. An example would be a worker on the second floor of a building needed to contact another worker but didn’t have the time to phone or transport themselves because they were pressed for time. Well they could simply leave an e-mail for them, go to lunch or a meeting and come back and there could be a response there or maybe a phone call. Another example could be that the boss has a new list of employment benefits so he or she needs to contact every employee that works for them. So he or she could send out an e-mail to all employees and notify them of the change instead of mailing them the new information.
In our society today, we rely a lot more on e-mail than regular mail. E-mail allows us to think about what we want to write, rather than if you are taking to someone such as your boss, you have to think up a response right then and there. E-mail also prevents us from mailing actual letters. When you mail an actual letter you have to put it in an envelope and put a stamp on it with the address and then go out to the mailbox lift up the flag and it’s mailed whenever the mailman/woman comes to get it. With e-mail you type in the address and click send, and it’s sent instantly with no waiting around. Also with e-mail if mess up you don't have to start all over again thanks to the computer. A video on YouTube provides a comical outlook on e-mail in the 15th century. A conclusion that a person may come to after viewing the video would be that because of e-mail we found a new way to make more time available to us when we are being "hounded."

Time can be the essence of our life, and we go by it and use it everyday. E-mail that had once benefitted us in the workplace can benefit us in regular life too. Staying in contact with old friends can be just as important as a memo from your boss and they can be both accessed through the same way, e-mail. Yes e-mail can be defined as the sending and receiving of messages but to us as a society it is much more than that.