麻豆传媒

I WISH my doorbell would stop emailing me every few hours about how its camera isn鈥檛 working. I also wish a certain person would stop sending long-winded, hostile proclamations to one of my favourite email lists. My two wishes bookend the long history of email problems, from irritating listservs 40 years ago to automated notices from inanimate objects today. It is one of the internet鈥檚 oldest apps 鈥� from the days before we used the word 鈥渁pp鈥� even 鈥� and despite its drawbacks, most of us still use it every day.

Typically, the apps we download in 2020 have been available for mere days or months. We are used to the pang of regret when really useful software suddenly winks out of existence. How has email remained a constant for nearly 50 years? Yes, it is helpful that email is based on an ancient communications medium that stretches back to some of the first examples of written language. But that isn鈥檛 the full story.

First, email managed to survive massive upheavals in the way we use computers. In the early 1970s, when email was born, it was almost exclusively a tool for researchers, university students and engineers. You would send, receive and store your email on a work computer. With the rise of personal computers in the 1980s and 90s, email became something you kept on your own private machines or disks 鈥� almost like storing old letters in a shoebox. Now, we have come full circle. Most of us store our personal mail in the cloud, which is essentially like storing it on somebody else鈥檚 work computer.

It is extremely rare to see apps make the leap from one platform to another like email did. They tend to die in the journey from web to mobile, or from one game system to another. Sure, there are Sega Dreamcast games that we can play on emulators, but that isn鈥檛 the same. And don鈥檛 even get me started on what happened to some of my favourite web animations when Flash went to the rainbow bridge.

As well as weathering dramatic tech changes, email dealt with another major hurdle: spam. In the 1990s and early 2000s, people鈥檚 inboxes were clogged with so much junk that it was impossible to find the stuff you wanted. You had to install another program 鈥� a spam filter 鈥� just to use your email program. But in the age of cloud mail, anti-spam systems have become so good that it is rare to see one of those quaint old subject lines touting 鈥淰1@g*r$@!鈥� or 鈥減r0n鈥� to get around word filters.

鈥淚n the age of cloud mail, it is rare to see quaint old subject lines touting 鈥榁1@g*r$@!鈥� to get around word filters鈥�

As anyone who has dealt with the bizarro world of social media knows, it is enormously difficult to filter out unwanted messages. Props to email providers for figuring out how to separate the ham from the spam. Indeed, this is another way email offers a lesson to app makers who want their wares to last more than a decade. Tech critic Sarah Jeong talks about this in her book The Internet of Garbage. She argues that spam filters can provide a model for how companies like Twitter and Facebook should deal with abuse, propaganda and all the other horrifying stuff that we never asked to see in our feeds.

And yet, despite its heroic triumph over tech obsolescence and spam, email isn鈥檛 exactly alluring. We use it mostly for official correspondence, automated reminders (hello, doorbell!) and shopping receipts, along with the occasional bit of personal news. Though email communication is practically instantaneous, it feels slow. Why email when you could text?

Perhaps that is the point. Email isn鈥檛 a brand-new way to socialise, nor is it juiced up with memes and hot takes. But we are still opening Gmail or Hotmail or Zaphodmail every day because it works and everybody has it. Under the hood, email uses a protocol that keeps trying to send data, over and over, hoping that it can outlast network problems. It doesn鈥檛 give up. And somehow, by trying really earnestly, it has outlived the computers where it was born and the spammers who tried to defeat it.