"You've Got Mail"

Remeber how exciting it was to hit "Connect" on the screen prompt, then listen as your computer's modem came to life, smartly dialing the local access number for America On Line (AOL), then the crazy squish-squish-ding noises start to chime as the modem goes into it's "handshake" mode, and then you hear that little message "You've Got Mail." It was all so fun and new. Then spam started to flood your inbox, and you had more erectile dysfunction offers than you could handle, not to mention the "other stuff" that you would get that made you wonder who in the hell got your email address, and why would they think you would be interested in such filth!

The ability to correspond electronically revolutionized instant communication in a way that had never been experienced before. There had been inventions dating back over 100 years that could, technically, be considered instant, such as the telegraph, and the telephone. In fact, the telephone can be credited as the first true "instant" comunicator that was available to the masses. Email, however, took it to a whole other level. Almost a hundred years passed between the telephone and email becoming accepted as a communications means, and nothing in between the two has had the same impact that electronic mail has had on modern communication.

Why is email so popular? Because it managed to make instant communication official and personal. Beleive it or not, it's much more personal when it's written. That's why greeting cards are so popular. When someone actually takes the time to write something, that something has meaning. Mom likes a phone call on Mother's Day, but a card written by someone you don't even know, and sent in the mail just says "I Love You!" Email allows the written word to travel for free and in seconds, unlike the the US Postal service which takes a few days and cost you at least 40 cents to do.

While you can certainly email and just say hi, electronic mail has grown to be accepted as an official form of communicating in the workplace and in the world. It's also had an adverse effect on traditional stamped mail. Almost every professional entity in the world, today, utilizes email as one of their two official methods of communication. Most employers also require their staff to have a work email account, and they utilize email to inform their workforce via Help-desk messages, and mass email bulletins. Email is also accepted as a primary form of contact. Most people will now include their email address and telephone on their business cards, rather than a physical address, because so much of our business is web-based, thanks to the internet. This is true, also, in our private lives when more and more people have a working email address. Those personal email addresses are becoming a sort of social security number. Many web sites will utilize your email address as an identifier and a way to validate that you are, in fact, a real person, and not a spam application. As with the internet, the more wide acceptance these new technologies receive, the more and more you will find people with email addresses. The question is will another technology, like IM or text messaging, ever replace email as the standard-bearer in electronic communication. We'll just have to wait and see.