COM125 Week2: Email

History

The birth of the electronic mail or email in 1965 predated the Internet and “was a crucial tool in creating it” (“Wikipedia: History of the Internet”, 2006). It also paved the way “for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate”, and it soon evolved into a network which enabled users to “pass messages between different computers” (“Wikipedia: Email”, 2006).

Then, in 1971 Ray Tomlinson created what we know now as the “standard email address format”, that separated user names from host names with the @ sign (“Wikipedia: History of the Internet”, 2006). Only in the early 1990s, however, did the widespread public use of email begin.

Today, not only is email employed in the “Internet email system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol” (“Wikipedia: Email”, 2006), it is also inherent in intranet systems that enable members of an organization to communicate with one another. The proliferation of its use is unavoidable as it is user friendly, efficient, and versatile in facilitating asynchronous communication. In fact, about 60% of the UK population use email in their daily lives – an unsurprising statistic if you consider that about 50% of UK households have access to the Internet.

Graphic Representation of UK Households with Internet Access:

Spam

The advent of the email and its prevalence has heavily influenced the Internet in both good ways and bad. For example, email spam – the sending of unsolicited, “nearly identical messages to numerous recipients by email” (“Wikipedia: Spam”, 2007), has become a negative side effect of email. According to the Message Labs Home Page, spam accounted for “about 83% of all incoming emails” in 2005, “up from 24% in January 2003” (as cited in Gomes et al., 2005, p.1).

This trend resulted in the creation of spam filters, that according to Internet researchers dramatically decreased the amount of spam received between “March and September” 2006 (Sloan, 2007). However, within three months, spammers have developed new spam techniques that “have effectively defeated these email filters”. This is possible as spam filters cannot differentiate between legitimate and spam image content. Thus, spammers simply convert their advertisements into images and insert them into their emails. In fact, this practice is now so prevalent that “email security firm Postini said recently that image-embedded spam made up 45% of all spam” at the end of 2006, as compared to the measly “2% a year ago” (Sloan, 2007). This problem is compounded by the use of botnets – expanded systems that are created via the hijacking regular Internet users’ computers.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that current spam filters are capable of dealing with the new forms of spam. Meanwhile, users would have to waste precious time deleting spam emails from their inboxes and retrieving legitimate emails from their spam folders.

Therefore, email and inadvertently spam has had such in impact on the Internet for it has revolutionized the means of advertising and marketing; making millionaires of spammers, and sparking near impossible proposals of “a tiny fee to send email” by Bill Gates, as well as “a one year plan to change the entire, underlying system of sending, routing, and receiving electronic mail” (Sloan, 2007).

Benefits

On the other hand, email also has its benefits. According to Professor M. Lynne Markus of The Claremont Graduate School (1994), the use of email for intra-organizational coordination, is believed to “increase personal and organizational productivity”. This could be possible due to the fact that “managers who receive email are not passive recipients of data, but active produces of meaning”, and “empirical findings in which email readily supports the level of richness that information richness theory reserves for what it considers to be rich media”.

My Personal Experience

On a more personal note, for the past two years I have been in communication with an American girl only via email. We are not pen pals and barely know how the other looks like, but we email each other frequently as we are co-authors of a novel of sorts. In other words, the creation of our literature from characterization to world building has been done solely through email. Email has been such an integral part of this endeavor that without it, we would have been unable to edit our drafts, discuss possible plot lines, or receive notifications of reviews submitted by our avid readers.

Our work can be viewed at these links:

Pirate Princess (complete) ~ http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2064459/1/

Gypsy Queen (in-progress) ~ http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3252904/1/

Conclusion

In conclusion, judging by the enormous influence email has had and continues to have on the Internet, it is a double-edged sword. With its ever-extending reach into the awareness of the masses, it can be used for good or ill. As such, it should be employed with the utmost care.

References

Car, J., & Sheikkh, A. (2004, August). Email consultations in health care: 1 – scope and effectiveness. BMJ: Helping doctors make better decisions. 329 (435). Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/329/7463/435?ck=nck

Gomes, L. H., Almeida, R. B., Bettencourt, L. M. A., Almeida, V., & Almeida, J. M. (2005). Comparative Graph Theoretical Characterization of Networks of Spam and Legitimate Email. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://www.ceas.cc/papers-2005/131.pdf

Lee, A. S. (1994). Electronic Mail as a Medium for Rich Communication: An Empirical Investigation Using Hermeneutic Interpretation. MIS Quarterly, 18, 2, 143-157. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0276-7783%28199406%2918%3A2%3C143%3AEMAAMF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U&size=SMALL

Markus, M. L. (1994). Electronic Mail As the Medium of Managerial Choice. [Electronic version]. Organization Science, 5, 4, 502-527. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1047-7039%28199411%295%3A4%3C502%3AEMATMO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8&size=LARGE

Sloan, W. (2007, January 10). The new spam: it's bigger and uglier. Bangkok Post. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from http://www.bangkokpost.com/.

Wikipedia: Email (2006, Feb 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email

Wikipedia: History of the Internet (2006, Aug 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_Internet&oldid=70771572

Wikipedia: Spam (2007, Jan 25). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam