What is wrong with e-mail? Can it be fixed? - The Sender

This is one in a series of blog posts about email. The other posts can be found at: My hypothesis: e-mail is evil and deserves to die!, Problems with email….. I appear to have touched a nerve…, What is wrong with e-mail? Can it be fixed?, What is wrong with e-mail? Can it be fixed? - The Programmers, What is wrong with e-mail? Can it be fixed? - The Receiver and the dreaded FYI and What is wrong with e-mail? Can it be fixed? - The Receiver and meta-data.

With the change of communication habits, such as the increased use of text messaging and Twitter, people seem to be writing shorted and shorter e-mails as we become skilled at cramming more and more meaning in to fewer and fewer characters. I know my e-mails would become shorter, and I was known for sending short e-mails even before text messaging and twitter became popular. And this is where one of the problems comes in…. E-mail users who write 'long-form' essay style emails find the short-form email rude. That is, they read into the short, concise and accurate e-mail things that are not there such as anger and rudeness. The 'long–form' e-mail seems to hold the view that the person sending short emails isn't willing to put the time or effort in to communicate, whereas the user who likes and uses short emails find the 'long-form' tedious and a waste of their time, that is, they take too long to get to the point.

So, we need a compromise. Well, it's not really a compromise its that the 'long-form' e-mailers need to accept that e-mails are not letters, but are in fact a short and efficient form of communication. That is, but the fluffy stuff and get to the point.

A couple of days ago I saw a link on twitter to a really interesting piece on the xkcd.com website which for me encapsulated part of the argument I'm trying to make here, that is, things changed, short brief communications are the future, and letter writing (particularly in e-mails) is dead. What was nice about the piece on xkcd.com (assuming it's true) is that none of this is new, and we faced exactly the same problem well over 100 years ago when people were complaining that the art of letter writing was dying as a result of the introduction of cheap postage rates. That is, when it was expensive to send a letter people took time to craft and write their message, whereas once the postage became cheap people would just dash off a line or 2 because the cost was prohibitive.

One final thought on the role of the sender in efficient and effective e-mailing is the use of good subject lines and the inclusion, if at all possible, of meta-data (admittedly the inclusion of meta-data is not really possible due to the current design of the e-mail protocol and the various e-mail client is available). The lack of a suitable subject lines and meta-data means that the effective storage, sorting and searching of e-mail is a problem.

My view is still that e-mail is not suitable for modern and effective communication and should be killed off. What do you think?