deja vu

[cellio]

In the early days, email was unreliable and slow. We had to route messages by hand, and each machine in the network might process its UUCP queue only once or twice a day. It could take days for a message to get to its recipient, and sometimes it didn't get there at all.

Then, the ARPANet became dominant and email was faster and more reliable. Most people using it were "practicioners" of various sorts; the average guy on the street didn't yet have email.

Then two things happened: spam, and widespread email access (making spam even more profitable). Now, almost 10 years after the green-card lawyers created the first piece of spam and AOL sent out its first mass (physical) mailing of software, we're all swimming in spam, and virii, and lures (for the unsuspecting) to "just click here", and the attendant side effects. So we have filters and auto-processing of various sorts, and this month most of us aren't inspecting bounced-message reports because of all the SoBig-generated false ones, so we don't even know if we're seeing all our mail or if the mail we send gets through. Sometimes we have to send messages several times, or actually tell someone "I sent you email", before the recipient actually sees it.

25 years after the rise of UUCP, email is unreliable and slow again. Oops.

Comments

Email...

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, there was an article in CIO magazine last year about companies who had gone almost entirely to email going back to voicemail and (gasp!) phone calls because their email was so junky. Sigh.

Re: Email...

[cellio]

A similar trend: we've all pretty much abandoned Usenet (or so I gather) to go back to mailing lists.

Usenet

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, that's true....

Re: Usenet

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, a few groups have started being useful again, after folks abandoned them long enough for the spammers to give up.