

24 years of email - jgrahamc
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/02/24-years-of-email.html

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cpr
Heh, I'm so old I remember being on the first mailing list on the Internet
back in 1972-73, which was (suitably meta) a mailing list about mail programs
& related issues.

(It was based out of BBN, whence came the first email.)

The first mail servers were rather primitive: they were just (pre-TCP/IP) FTP-
like servers that would open your local mailbox (on TOPS-10 in our case, at
HARV-10) and append to it. Lots of interesting locking issues...

~~~
dugmartin
I'm not that old but I do remember the day when my college BITNET email
address could finally gateway to the Internet. Seeing dots in the domain part
of the address was weird.

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mcargian
> And most people's domains hadn't reached the point where just using initials
> was unworkable.

Seems like my first email address (especially university VAX accounts) back
then were even more cryptic and included some bizarre Godzilla reference like
djd984kd@mothra.someschool.edu.

~~~
icey
The .mil domains were especially bad, you'd end up with monstrosities like:

col.so-on.and.so-forth@afc.dcmc4.west.army.mil

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jolie
I think Gmail/Apple Mail's message threading system should be included. When I
think about the pre-thread days of having to read 16 separate emails because 8
corporate douchebags all responded needlessly to the same original message, it
makes me appreciate email threading even more.

~~~
jedbrown
Threading predates Gmail by a couple decades. RFC-822 (1982) specifies the
necessary fields, and though I don't have personal experience prior to the
early 90s, I'm sure decent MUAs supported threading in the 80s.

I actually find Gmail's threading annoying since it only threads at the level
of the "conversation" (aka "subject"), even when the initial thread has split.
So Gmail doesn't tell me which branch a particular message lives on, and if
the reply does not quote enough context, you really can't find out without
inspecting the raw message.

Furthermore, several messages that _should_ be threaded together, such as a
patch series, show up as unrelated messages in the UI because they have
different subjects. So Gmail's threading UI does the "wrong" thing because
people have a tendency to screw up headers, e.g. trying to start a new thread
by replying to an existing one and changing the subject. I'm not sure this is
progress.

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barrkel
Search isn't a general replacement for folders. If you're using folders to try
and find things, then yes, search is better for finding than you doing
classification yourself.

But filtering things into folders is very useful for other basic forms of
categorization, such as by identity (if you have multiple email addresses), or
by mailing list (mental context switching is hard) or by priority (I do mine
by three categories - the actual inbox, which I empty regularly, emails that
will need replies after something else has been done, and everything else).

~~~
philwelch
A lot of categorization can actually be done by search though--identity and
mailing list can be done by searching against the to: field.

~~~
barrkel
I read my Usenet newsgroups and my mailing lists using the same software, with
threaded conversations in multiple branches etc. handled in uniform fashion.

The same style for email conversations (in the GMail grouping sense) works
less well because, as it turns out, the heuristic of using the title for
thread membership works quite well for mailing lists but not so for personal
mail, where "Hello" and similar variations come up too often.

The identity issue is less about functionality than it is about the risk of
accidentally using the wrong persona. Not that I'm trying to be schizophrenic,
but I do have a degree of compartmentalization in different areas of my online
life.

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lecha
What about attachments? AFAIK attachments weren't part of the initial
implementation of email.

Today though, emailing attachments to small groups is mainstream. This is what
many people use as THE form of controlled document distribution and
collaboration.

Will improving this aspect of email be the next evolution?

~~~
wmf
Attachments are part of MIME.

------
joshu
> That's one major innovation every 8 years

I wonder if this is a pattern across technologies.

~~~
chubbard
No. Just look at the major innovations on the web and you'll see it doesn't
follow that pattern. Search Engines, Google, Web based email, Web based
Applications, AJAX, Rebirth of Javascript, Horizontal Scaling, Tagging,
Folksonomy, Wikipedia, Twitter, Blogging, all major innovations and some have
occurred in less than 8 years of each other. Frequency of major innovations
are fueled by how many people are working on it. Rates of innovation can be a
measure of how hot a technology is. Every 8 years indicates a much cooler
technology than say the web.

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coderdude
> I don't think the little > is cutting it anymore.

Edit: Read the article before you respond.

~~~
algorias
>> I don't think the little > is cutting it anymore.

Of course it is, coderdude!

EDIT: too subtle?

~~~
coderdude
I think it was just too early (in the morning). :)

