Blog Post #4: EOTO Emails

 The birth of the EMAIL started with Ray Tomlinson who came up with the idea while working for ARPANET, a government-funded research project that eventually became the foundation of the internet, in the early 1970s. It turns out there is some controversy though on who really is the true inventor of the EMAIL. The other name linked to the EMAIL is Shiva Ayyadurai who says he was the one who invented email as a teen tech prodigy in the late 1970s. Tomlinson set out to solve the problem of how people would communicate using computers. At the time people were sending messages to numerous mailboxes just to be printed out on paper and delivered to physical inboxes. Tomlinson thought of a way to use ARPANET’s network to send messages to linked computers. It is thought today that Tomlinson’s most acknowledged contribution to the EMAIL was the “@” symbol. “The realization that this had become a big thing didn’t really come until somebody asked the question, just before the 25th anniversary of the ARPANET, ‘Where did the email come from?’ Several people remembered that I had written this program way back when and called me; I said, yeah, I did that …” said Ray Tomlinson. 

The EMAIL definitely has a great impact on the world. Using EMAIL is highly more efficient due to the fact that we no longer have to use as much paper to send messages. EMAIL has also improved the way we communicate with one another in many ways which then reduced the use of traditional mail. A study from 2013 concluded that email has replaced 92% of written letters as a way of personal communication. For example, bills and any other type of payments would be delivered through traditional mail services, but now they are majority digital. Email, in addition, increases access to new people and provides access to information that would otherwise be unattainable.

Along with the previously said benefits, there are even more positives that come with EMAIL these would include that emails can be delivered very fast and at any time of the day, while traditional mail can take several days and even weeks to get to the recipient and you can only send it during certain hours. Emails are also free and you can send them to one person or multiple people at once. Emailing is also really simple, you can easily reference previous emails by searching them in your database.  

Although the EMAIL has many positives it does come with some negatives; those include the need for the internet to send and receive emails. Viruses are also very easily spread through emails and/or email attachments, spam also goes along with this, you can’t help but somehow get both viruses and spam emails. Emails also tend to take up a lot of time and storage if you don’t maintain them accordingly. 

Personally, using EMAIL is the most efficient way to communicate with people, especially in a business and/or professional setting. The benefits will probably always outway the negatives, and compared to traditional mail it is much more organized.