Is email dead… again?

Apparently—according to PC Pro running it as a story this month (alphr.com)—email is dead, again, some might say as, those who have been online long enough—indeed, growing up with it and not just into it as some younger Millenials have or some elder Luddite cats giving internet a spin within the last few years seemingly because they heard it was replacing the personals in whatever local village newspaper they used to read and that on the whole it is a totally legit “young” dead keen ”for old” dating space—may notice it’s demise is regularly predicted every few years, and usually for the reason of giving content article space to whatever ad-revenue supporting flavour of the month may replace it—seemingly workplace chat service Slack at the moment (theverge.com)—which invariably never does.

Seemingly it’s a similar “unkillable cockroach” Microsoft’s Visual Basic 6 turned out to favourably be for rapid app developers who didn’t really have that much of an ego to appeal to.

But seemingly the once LAN lines now WIFI signals are often crossed in the article—and all those before and no doubt after too—promoting its demise.

Is it just for work?

On the one hand we have those at work who’s job that involves keeping in touch in some way is hampered by having bucket loads of email that is but hardly ever important or indeed related to anything that should be safe for or indeed just actually related to any work than they can handle, and on the other hand we have Millenials who never having used it anyway, it being dead boring, having no cam and unlikely to include naked selfies as opposed to the instant-contact fun of social media. Which, come to think of it, is seemingly the real reason why it dosn’t appeal much to those elder cats looking for that replacement for personal column with virtual girl-next-door pictures and nawty story too, and suggestively why with their appearance and sign up those of younger years have left Facebook in droves.

And yet the article tract still seems to be that while email is the de facto means of “work-based” communication, seemingly suggesting work and pleasure have never been more intrinsically mixed and ignoring decades of employer instance that you don’t do “social”—media or otherwise—while supposed to be at work, and indeed, working; I certainly know of a few who indeed even ban access via site restriction to the mighty F’book et al. while giving and receiving payment for your time.

For sure, what is usually the article content replacement for is generally related to social media similar, or WhatsApp alternatives—usually with a premium price upgrade option.

Perhaps engendering a hope that they will suddenly become more “business-like” just “because” and not full of the emotivism (as in “hurrah/boo” theory) on any—and invariably all—given “trending” topic which I gather is not usually related to work you may be undertaking, common interests you may share and, indeed, often full of the sort of language and personal insults that generally in the workplace leads to intervention by disciplinary action or, indeed again, in a more “social” context immediate removal from Friends list for “rudeness” only to be reinstated weeks later because… well, no one is really “talking to me” on these things. But then again, I hear many on social media are “friended” only to show how popular and important you are rather than any desire to interact with.

But surely email is only as interruptive to work as answering any social media or WhatsApp status update? Indeed, probably, if you have given it out to all and unrelated sundry and not made use of something email does do very well, being the ability to create multiple accounts that do not require your RealName etc. to divide the load into important, relevant, and downright spam and crap, and also allowing a more measured and not so much knee jerk reply that you have to stop everything else you are doing while you tightly hold your device anxiously awaiting.

Perhaps there is also the issue of “privacy” in that emails are generally—although you can use CC and BCC to send the same message to everyone often resulting in those horror stories of mailing out “boss have got his finger up his arse again” to all, unfortunately accidentally including said prostrate-probing boss—sent to a particular person for their particular attention and not, as is invariably the case on social media, for the attention of everybody else to see how “popular” you are too, something which I hear does not generally go down well in the workplace.

Work aside, perhaps for those not seeing email of much use anymore, even when having to use it to varify any particular account they wish to open or sync with, the issue is one of communication in general though as well-honed social-bonding messages annoucing “I’m bored, how about you?” occassionally delivered as tempting offer to join social media, vidcam or chat sites often may leave some thinking it little more than offer to be bored too.

But, indeed, as the issue itself reports in its reader poll, email is far from dead… again. Perhaps it will continue on for an indefinite time yet, if only for the very purpose everything else seems to rely on it as as fallback for, being to filter out the time wasters and chancers who, if they can’t be bothered to answer an email….

And whether you do—or do not check your inbox—before status update checking to find out what people just had for tea, it’s musical break time. But I keep cruising, can’t stop, won’t stop moving / It’s like I got this music in my body and it’s gonna be alright / ’Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate / Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake / I shake it off, I shake it off

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