I can remember the day that I sent my first fax. I had to use someone else’s fax machine and I even had to pay them 50 cents for something that didn’t actually cost them anything, not that I knew that at the time. I was really impressed with the way a piece of paper almost physically (in my mind) was transported from one place to another. It was amazing.
A few years latter businesses everywhere had a fax machine. I remember arriving at work in the morning to see faxes all over the floor. There were even special offers sent through which seemed to be “exclusive” to people who had a fax machine. Most people seemed to welcome them. I think in the age of email we call this SPAM.
A few years latter I got my first email account. It was an internal email account using an early version of Lotus Notes. Everyone in the physical office could email each other. A few months latter, just the managers got the ability to email outside companies. I was never one of these privileged people. However, about one year latter I got myself a dial-up connection and an email account.
The first time I sent my first email I only had about two people I could email. Not so long after that I found more people in other countries. This was incredible technology. It is now something that I take for granted. Email seems to be with me all of the time. I go to a meeting after clearing my in-box and by the end I have another 10 – 20 messages to deal with.
It is hard to imagine that email could possibly be on its way out. That within a few years it will be like a fax machine is today, hardly ever used. Some people will be reading this thinking “yeah right, like that will ever happen”. Well it is!
I know of people who no longer use email at all, and yet they communicate more effectively than ever before. Some people now live in social networking sites such as Facebook or Bebo. If you are a regular user of these sites then consider how much you use email now. Your usage may have gone down. It hasn’t changed for me yet, but it is moving that way. Teenagers are a very good example.
This is what we call “disorganized collaboration”. People get to contribute information in many different ways, but at the same time people can get to it when they need to.
One of IBM’s best selling products is Lotus Connections. It is basically Facebook for internal business use. With the use of this technology I can engage my team in being able to share ideas around projects and the way we do things. They can read what others think, they can peer moderate. Everyone gets a say. Think about the potential.
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I’m in the “that will ever happen” group then, Vaughan, the GCC (global communication change, rather than global climate change) deniers.
Faxes are clumsy and expensive to use, and consume significant paper resources. But sending e-mail is definitely NOT clumsy and expensive, and for many tasks will remain quite effective. So I reckon there’ll be a steady place for e-mail for quite a long while, even if a declining proportion of total communications.
Which is not all to deny that other collaboration and communication channels will, and already are, increasing in usage and popularity. Some of the new and emerging mechanisms are not particularly effective for some long-term communication requirements, wouldn’t you say?
Only time will tell, and you’re brave for predicting the demise of e-mail!
The actual trends we see in a large, global email environment is at least a 20% growth in both internal and external (post scrubbed) email volume each year, and looking back over the past 8-9 years that trend line is exponential vs 2001 baseline. Those persons that use email, use it more each year, in terms of quantifiable numbers of messages sent and received per person per year. None of this data supports your position that it is going away, in fact it continues to consistently grow.
Email remains the “collaboration” method of choice for the vast majority of users, repeated surveys over years here, and personal observation indicate that users do not use nor grasp the use of file shares, sharepoint, notes databases, or other, better collaboration technologies. Users consistently identify email as the most important tool for collaboration with both internal and external entities, followed by voice services as a distant second.
Connections and other social software are interesting technologies that are unlikely to be adopted in this kind corporate culture. The “everyone contributes anything without controls” paradigm that has been so successful for social sites, is a big mismatch for corporate environments where policy, legal implications, privacy requirements, HR requirements and others continue to require some level of control. The cost of Lotus Connections is relatively high as well, making the cost justification less attractive.
A couple of thoughts – the medium’s usefulness depends on how well the content can be filtered, sorted and searched.
Email has all the tools we need to that end. Twitter and Facebook less so but some. All of them can be subject to SPAMming but consider that email has been around, in one form or another, for about 50 years. 60 if you count Teletype and more like 130 if you count Telegrams. The need to send and receive messages from one sender to one recipient will never be lost to us. I predicted 6 years ago that email would die within 4 because Instant Messaging was gaining so much popularity. But it lacked the filter, sort and search ability email has grown to do quite well.
I think social sites are a natural extension of electronic communication – they neatly take the place of mailing lists, which are annoying to maintain anyway. It’s much easier for people to subscribe to us than the other way around. But in allowing passive subscription to our messages, we also remove the control we had over the direct recipients.
Perhaps, as social tools grow and mature they will edge out traditional email in the POP3 / SMTP sense, but they continue to rely upon email for verification and often have email like features within them… much like the BBS I was using in 1985 where I had a mail box and could send and receive mail to other users on the BBS.
We’ll always have a need to write person to person communication – will social sites replace this? I don’t think so – the value of having time to organize your thoughts and edit them in an email and direct them to one special person will always be a strong system requirement. How can a social tool replace this without emulating it and hence just introducing another form of it?
G’day Vaughan, my dad was one of the first people to actively promote fax machines in New Zealand. He worked for Xerox at the time (’70’s) and I remember it was a HUGE deal! I remember the old fax machines, they were also HUGE!
@Jerry
I think that it is really about evolving the way in which we communicate. The term “social” is really just an example of the commonly known technology type. Faxes are still around at the moment and will be for quite some time. In the same way email will be around but on a lesser scale, probably more for the one to one communication.
When I send an email to a group of people looking for their thoughts on a particular matter, I am far better to use technology which allows for all of those people to see all of the discussion that is taking place. Otherwise people miss out on stuff as it just ends up in my inbox. Not so good for the rest of the team.
@Dan
Lotus Connections is one of IBM’s fastest growing products. It has been proven to reduce project timeframes by over 30%. Yes, there are legal implications, but there is also security which can restrict who can access what.
The fact is, the way people are no communicating and thinking is changing really quickly.
Take for example, an office building. Over the years people have moved to an open plan setup, with managers sitting in offices. You might have a security card which will allow you to access parts of the building and not others, just incase there is something confidential happening on the other side of a door. We separated people with physical walls.
Now, large corporates are building new office blocks which have no walls. Each floor opens out over the atrium and everyone can see everyone else etc. One you are through the door into the building, you can access everything and anywhere. The whole idea is that people will be able to have conversations which will be overheard both other people. Suddenly, someone completely out of the loop picks up on something and is able to contribute something of great value.
It goes beyond this. These new buildings are not built with tinted glass. They have a glass outside which everyone on the street can see straight through.
There is a new way of thinking which is now challenging the way we do things.
Provocative Vaughan.
Once the annual GROWTH RATE of email usage decreases, then you might have a point. But before then, there is no end in sight.
There is room for email AND social networking platforms. They are not mutually exclusive. There is very little cannibalisation.
And there will always be a significant proportion of people who will struggle to use email let alone complicated applications like FaceBook.
Can’t see it myself.
Faxes were fairly annoying adjuncts… “conveniences” to office life.
Email is the back-bone of web authentication. Entirely different kettle of fish. Admittedly, Oauth/twitter could handle a lot of these, but email is still the back-bone of twitter authentication, and it would mean every app that I’d signed up to would need to implement some sort of complex migration strategy.
I’m vaguely expecting the evolution of people wanting to create unified identities across multiple platforms – in a big way… and this may drive app developers to set up options for this… but not everyone will want to do it, so it won’t be enforced.
So yea, a lot of communication, especially of the casual, “keeping in touch” kind is conducted via social networks, but email isn’t going to go away any time soon – certainly not 5-10 years… because it’s a hell of a lot more than an convenient adjunct to what people get up to in offices.
I don’t think that adoption of one technology necessarily means the death of another.
The one thing that email has over any mooted succesor is its independence of vendor or platform. It’s possible to send an email to anyone with an email address without concerning yourself with the technology used by the recipient. Very much like a picture doesn’t necessarily require the viewer to speak a specific language.
I agree that social software will revolutionise the corporate environment and bring as yet undiscovered benefits but it may not necessarily stop people sending emails.
Don’t think so. Talk to an attorney lately? Fax machines are an essential tool for them. I used to sell them, and they were my best clients. A busy firm will have a non stop running machine.
In regards to email and fax, just yesterday I printed a file that I received by email, signed it, and faxed it back to my work. No company would want to do without that capability.
Faxing and emails will die right after he post office stops delivering the mail.