E-mail is broken

While sitting down to write what was likely to be a completely different blog post, I found myself compelled to write this, so here goes…

E-mail, as a technology, is broken… and we broke it.

E-mail (electronic mail) was originally intended as a means of sending messages digitally in a similar form as a posted letter. A nice simple envelope with a hand-written or typed up letter, possibly to a pen-pal or maybe a notice to cancel an account of sorts… only digital.

As the internet became more popular, it became more a commonplace item in our lives. Nowadays, we almost assume that someone has at least an e-mail address, let alone a Facebook or Twitter account. E-mail is a common form of communication amongst the majority of us who are hooked into technology… so why can’t we use it correctly?

When e-mailing day to day for business, it is a common occurrence to need to share files of indiscriminate size with colleagues… JPEGs, design files, slideshow presentations, etc. These files can become somewhat larger than expected, ranging from a few (acceptable) kilobytes to several (unacceptable) megabytes.

Ladies and gentlemen, I pose to you this question: would you attempt to throw a shoe down a hosepipe?

Exactly. Then why send such large files over e-mail? It just seems impractical.

For instances where this is required, I’d recommend services such as Dropbox or CloudApp, two of the many online storage services available today… for free. If it’s free and easy to use, why not use it, right? This means you need only send a few characters of text in your e-mail, rather than, for example, a 5MB spreadsheet. The e-mail should arrive quicker in the recipient’s inbox, meaning you’ll get a potentially quicker response. It’s a win-win situation.

As e-mail has become such a common and widely used tool in today’s society, it seems to have become easy for us to lose sight of it’s original intended purpose. When you next find yourself needing to send a (possibly large) file to a colleague, friend or family member, I implore you to think back on the tool’s purpose and ask yourself, “am I attempting to show a shoe down a hosepipe?”