I have seen the future: it is flooded with email

Author

Reisman, Sorel

Author_Institution

Dept. of Manage. Sci., California State Univ., Fullerton, CA

Volume

12

Issue

3

fYear

1995

fDate

5/1/1995 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

111

Lastpage

112

Abstract

I have been using electronic mail for years, first via Bitnet, then via the Internet. What do you do when you get email from someone you know? Delete it? No, of course not. You read it and you answer it. Therein lies my problem. Everyone is answering me! A few months ago, when I logged on, I had five or six messages each day. Now I log on to find 10 or 20 messages, all of them requiring a response. I suppose I could delete them, but friends are hard to find, so I find myself reading and responding to more and more messages-often on subjects I don´t really care about. Everyone, it seems, feels it is better to send than to receive. Did Alvin Toffler warn us about this? I have had a vision of the future. In it, we live in a virtual-reality environment and we spend all our waking hours as employees of the US Electronic Postal Service. Wake me when it´s over

Keywords

Internet; electronic mail; social aspects of automation; technological forecasting; Internet; electronic mail; file deletion; future; information overload; responses; virtual-reality environment; Auditory system; Communication standards; Cultural differences; Electronic mail; Global communication; Internet; Manufacturing; Modems; Page description languages; Robots;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Software, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0740-7459

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/52.382215

Filename

382215