The Long, Drawn-Out End of E-Mail as We Know It

J. Caron

Summary Bullets:

• E-mail has never been popular in business environments, so reports of its death are celebrated
• If e-mail is going to die, however, it will be long and slow, with new approaches requiring e-mail integration at the very least

Not long after e-mail went mainstream in late 1980s people started to complain about it. In fact, it was nearly instantaneous. At first there was a hint of pride embedded in complaints about the number of e-mails received – the eye-rolling moan about the “hundreds of e-mails each day” that really served to illustrate the complaining party’s indispensable magnificence.