Perhaps this is a strange title, now everybody is returning from the
X-mas and New Year break. Returning from a break or holiday usually
triggers the dreadful thoughts about overfull inboxes.
In organizations, email inboxes, along with inboxes from the latest
hyped workflow technology, can be overwhelming and stressful on their
own.
This is for work related email, but when I see the amount of traffic
on some developers mailing lists, like the Emacs developers list and
the org developers list, I can imagine that for the people involved,
who have to respond and react on those messages, it can all become a
bit overwhelming.
For private use, however, I think email is wonderful.
First experiences
-----------------
Before the internet, we used email in the local area network, like a
Novell network. This was only local email within the organization,
there was no connection to other networks. I don't remember the email
client(s) we used at those days, probably Pegasus.
My first experience with email over the internet stems from the
mid-nineties. The quirky sounds coming from the 14k4 modem prepped you
up, then followed by starting telnet en logging on in a Unix-y system
from the internet provider. There you started `Pine'.
Pine was used to read email messages, and for composing messages Pine
started the Pico editor.
The time being logged on was charged per time unit. It was registered
in seconds, and charged at the price of three Dutch Guilders per
hour. In addition came the telephone charges.
Fast forward a year, and I fetched my email using UUCP, and locally
sorting it out with Procmail.
On my Linux system at home I started with Pine as email client, and
tried some other clients.
In the beginning on Linux I installed Pine just to use Pico as
editor, next to Xedit. Soon I learned Vim, discovered and switched to
Mutt and have used that for decades, until late 2022, when I switched
to Gnus.
I have had my experiences with mailing lists, including the
flame-wars that seem to be part of such ecosystems.
Plain text
----------
When I started with email, plain text was the only option.
Later, with the rise of popularity of Windows95, suddenly email
in HTML format became in vogue.
In the present day most email clients default to HTML format.
I still prefer plain text format. Not only is HTML format a waist
of bandwidth, it also makes it harder to quote email and insert
your reaction right below the part you are reacting on.
Anybody who has used mailing lists knows what happens when
people don't do that.
Plain text can not contain privacy invading hidden pixels are other
components.
Federated
---------
Email used to be the hallmark of federation.
It is a federated protocol, and anybody can set up a server. At
least, that was how it was.
Currently there are just a few big tech companies that process almost
all the email on the planet. And because of that, they can push their
rules.
Passing spam filters has become dark magic. No matter how hard you
try to configure your SMTP server, a receiving server can happily
report a pass for the SPF test and a pass for the DKIM test, and
still mark your message as suspicious, for some obscure reason.
But in the end, it is still a federated protocol, and even if you
don't run your own mail server, there are still a number of providers
to choose from. No matter the provider, or your own operating system,
you can communicate with any other person that has an email address.
Because of the choice of providers, you don't have to accept a
provider bombarding you with ads and other tracking technology. In
that case, just vote with your feet and move on to a better
proposition.
Great for personal communication
--------------------------------
In the private setting, email is a great method of commutation.
Yes, email is considered "slow". But that is also its charm. In
private email exchange, there is no urgency. You pick your time to
read received messages, mulch on them, and reply when you are ready
for it.
Email lets you keep your tranquility. Unlike many other protocols,
you are not being disturbed my email, there is no need for
notifications, there are no annoying ads tracking you, no algorithms
pushing you.
Email messages can be a bit longer, and contain more depth than a
conversation on, say IRC, or Jabber, or evil social media instant
messaging services. The messages are more personal, and can be more
reflective.
The content is kept confidential thanks to encryption. When you
use an open source operating system, there is always an email
client that can do GnuPG.
