E-mail Isn't Broken

tech

I think that it's important for us - as a web community - to progress our tools & technologies, as is the case with e-mail at the moment. But let's not say that it's broken just because we're "stuck" using limited technology.


Lately I've been bemused with all of the new solutions that are popping up to fix e-mail. Wait! E-mail is broken? I must've missed that...

A large part of my working day is spent in whatever e-mail client I'm using at that moment. I'm not a creator or a builder, which means the majority of my tasks involve communication to varying degrees. And e-mail is my tool of choice. (Obviously I use other mediums too like Skype, actual meetings & some project management apps, but most of these also makes it's way back to e-mail eventually.)

I get that all of us suffer from e-mail overload. I do too and I'm by no means an A-list Internet Celebrity that gets 1000's of new e-mails a day. That said though, e-mail is still a fantastic tool for communication and there's no alternative technology for that at the moment.

Similarly, I don't believe that we can just wake up one morning and decide that e-mail is broken, because we have hundreds of unread e-mails in our inbox.


So when I see new apps like Mailbox & Hello (neither of which I've signed up for) get tweeted about furiously, it underlines the disconnect that we have about e-mail and what it's meant to do.

I fully agree that e-mail isn't a perfect technology and when the protocol was first designed in the 60's / 70's, it wasn't designed with today's demands in mind. So if you want e-mail to be your to do list or project management platform, then sadly that's not gonna happen. E-mail wasn't designed to be that.

I think that it's important for us - as a web community - to progress our tools & technologies, as is the case with e-mail at the moment. But let's not say that it's broken, just because we're "stuck" using a limited technology.

As long as you can send & receive e-mail, the technology is working exactly as it was planned to work. If you would rather your e-mail to be a to do list or a project management platform, there's loads of those web apps available.

Please just leave my e-mail the way it is.