Before I quit Facebook, I emailed a few important contacts of mine (they included both relatives and friends). I assumed like the good old times that they would check their emails and reply back in due course. However, apart from a single gentleman who is well into his 80s, the rest are yet to contact me. I must presume that people do not email each other these days. I still remember that the very first email that I had was on Yahoo. I still use my Yahoo email, although I had dabbled with Gmail for sometime till I was overwhelmed by the Spam and Phishing on that particular site. Nowadays I keep Google only for work. My primary mode of communication are other secure email accounts. Having said that, it is a pity that email is gradually disappearing from our daily lives. With everyone more accustomed to texting and the social media, emails are relegated only to the workplace.
I can understand why Dr. Cal Newport states that the social media has rapidly changed our way of communication and has thereby fashioned each one of us into tiny islands…cut off from each other…in a non communicative mode….
I remain an avid follower of the email culture as well as the blogging culture. Perhaps being old school, still makes me more communicative than my fellow countrymen/women. The Disappearing Email culture is indeed an extremely important facet that must be pondered upon.
The real wonder of email back in the day was the fact that you could send a letter instantaneously! Voila! there it was, delivered in the recipient’s inbox and they could read it and send you a letter back, all in the same morning, afternoon, or evening. It was truly magical and, for me, it still is.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the very same experience that you describe in this post. It left me scratching my head.
You’re absolutely correct ! The email was indeed a wondrous thing when it was in its infancy. Strangely things have gone downhill since the advent of Facebook and other social networks. I miss the good old days of emails and quality communication 🙂
Email is still around and I don’t think will ever go way, though may look different in the future. For the nonprofit I founded, most of the engagement is through the email list. Email too is your ‘street address’ in the digital world, here in America your emails and address is considered intellectual property.
Good to know that they recognize the email as IP. In this part of the world Whatsapp and Facebook and Instagram fashion society. Most people are a trifle too much engaged with the social media to look beyond it.