October 24, 2001
The future of E-mail
I live and work in towns just outside Trenton, N.J. And e-mail has never looked better.
That's easy to understand. Our regional U.S. post office facility is closed, with at least 31 anthrax "hot spots." Four workers there have come down with anthrax, including one with the potentially deadly inhaled form of the disease. The anthrax-laced letters to Tom Brokaw and Sen. Tom Daschle may have originated at a mailbox about five miles from my house.
So am I well-suited, at this moment, to offer a rational analysis of how the anthrax scare might affect the future of e-mail? Hardly. The "best advice" to local postal workers and residents has been a moving target. Mail-handling practices that seemed safe yesterday are being questioned today. I approach my mailbox with a sense of apprehension, and I wash my hands afterward.
Short-term, emotional responses like mine are not necessarily the seeds of a long-term trend. But I have to believe that the current anthrax challenge will fundamentally alter communications in our country, with e-mail becoming an even more important medium. Who benefits? What does this mean for demand for colocation and other Internet services that require data center space?
I don't have the answers just yet. But it's a key question for our industry. So I put it you, our readers, to offer your thoughts on the impact on the anthrax issue on the future of e-mail and data center services. Share your thoughts and comments below.
Posted by RichM at October 24, 2001 10:11 AMI would like to get my hands around Bin Laden's neck!
I think the U.S. should use e-mail for all items of correspondence that "can" be used electronically.
It lowers everyones risk and increases the chances of finding the ##### who are doing this.
Posted by: Jeff Carter at October 26, 2001 04:50 PMOur society is typically, slow to accept change in any form. With the events of the past six weeks maby the fog will lift and people will look to the internet as a safer, faster way to communicate.
Posted by: Rick Ross at October 30, 2001 09:42 AMIn defense of SPAM,
Even before the anthrax threat, there was an ecological argument that it makes more sense to send and receive junk email than junk postal mail. We're talking about fewer trees cut down and less polution from the paper making process.
Now we're talking about making it easier for the Postal Sevice to screen and sanitize mail by cutting down their load.
So many have put so much energy into stopping spam. Let's put the energy into regulating it, not stopping it.
Posted by: Paul Leif at October 30, 2001 02:12 PMI doubt you'll find much sympathy for SPAM among people who run and administer networks. There are good reasons for this, which are related to resource usage. Direct mail that travels across the U.S. Postal Service pays for the use of the delivery mechanism. Most unsolicited e-mail sent across the Internet essentially hijacks the resources of others without paying for them. Instead, it actually imposes a cost upon these providers, measured in terms of network usage and staff hours spent cleaning up bounces to false return addresses. This is a fundamental difference between direct mail and SPAM. If someone comes up woth an approach in which electronic direct mail pays its own way and doesn't leave a mess for others to clean up, that would be a starting point.
My interest is more in trends dealing with document delivery and adoption of e-mail among those who have tenaciously clung to "snail mail" up to this point. Electronic billing looks to be well positioned for future growth as well. Think of all the bills that have been delayed while mail on the East Coast is either halted or being sanitized. You can't very well collect on late bills that no one ever received, either. Food for thought.
Posted by: Rich Miller at October 30, 2001 03:12 PM