
The End of the Email Era - mjfern
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html
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Xichekolas
Does anyone wonder if this is a good thing?

Not about email in particular. I'd agree that email is being used less and
less in favor of other, more instant, forms of communication. And if email
died and was replaced by something else, that wouldn't bother me at all.

What increasingly bothers me is that we are reaching a point that the only way
to keep up with other people is to do it tweet by tweet and photo by photo.
Sure, this is much higher bandwidth than the Christmas State-Of-The-Family
letter we used to send each other, but it's also much more time consuming.

It takes a ton of time to sift through all that raw data and keep up with what
is going on. Instead of Alice going on vacation and spending a couple hours
summarizing it in an email to friends and family, you have _each_ friend
spending a couple hours sifting through Alice's photos, which she threw up on
Facebook unfiltered. Total time outlay before was higher for Alice and lower
for the friends. Now the situation is reversed.

Personally, it means I keep up with _fewer_ friends than before, or at least
it feels that way because I feel like I can't keep up. It's just too much
effort. I find it kind of odd that we expect people to just constantly be
living our lives alongside us by following our every action online. What was
wrong with actually _telling other people the important stuff_?

I know I sound like an old fogey saying all this (I'm only 26), but it's
honestly how I feel. It seems like there was value in the old model of
editorializing your own life and presenting it to others. Have you ever sat
through a slideshow of family photos? Did your eyes glaze over after photo 39
of Uncle Arty's 40th birthday, which happened before you were even born? That
is how I feel whenever I log into Facebook.

Of course, I'm not saying this because I think everything is going to pot. I
know we will find a balance. I mainly wonder where that balance will be, and
whether anyone else feels this way.

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Aschwin
Good point @Xichekolas: We don't editorializing our own life and are not aware
what information we give away to whom anymore. In the old old days, people
didn't knew your last name untill someone else introduced you. Now people
don't even bother to know your last name. They rather have your nickname or
e-mailaddress (or fb profile).

We have no control on what kind of information lands where. Be it your SSN or
where you last went on vacation. And we certainly don't know with what purpose
the other party gains that information. For me, I don't care about pageviews,
hits or anything that projects me as being popular or noticed. I want to know
the party who is receiving information about me and the purpose of what is
going to happen with that information. If I show people a slideshow of family
photos I certainly know they don't get a copy unless I provide it to them. In
the digital era it is quite different. Sharing is nice only if you can measure
what it will deliver back to you. For now, only bad things can happen if you
give up your privacy.

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dw0rm
I'd mention jabber in contrast to the email :D

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actionjackson
"—Ms. Vascellaro is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's San
Francisco bureau. She can be reached at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com"

Funny how she posts her email address instead of her fb profile.

