Principal E-Mail Benefits

The Functionality That Makes E-Mail "Mission Critical"

Carol Anne Ogdin
Founder, Deep Woods Technology, Inc.

The Core Technology

     Electronic mail is based on four key components:

     It's what these features give us that represents e-mail's benefit.

Time-Shifting, with a Record

     The most important feature of e-mail is that it is an easy way to send a message when it is convenient to the originator, so it can be read at a time convenient to the recipient.  It provides the time-shifting benefits of voice-mail, but with the advantages of having a paper trail, and the ability to easily edit for forwarding or reply.

     The practical advantage of this is that I can compose a message to my friend Graham in Australia from my hotel room in Boston at Noon, while Graham's still snug in his bed, asleep.  He'll get it when he gets to the office, and work out the reply, sending at the end of his business day, while I'm fast asleep.   Or, I can write a message about the meeting I'm in on my laptop, send it when I get a few minutes to connect to the Internet, and it shows up on my colleague's desk where it may wait several hours until she checks mail from home, later that evening.

     Of course, the ability to keep the message as a record of agreements and commitments is important...although perhaps not as robust a legal document as paper.  But, modern business runs on trust...and a good memory.  I trust that you'll live to your commitments, and you hold me to mine.  But, sometimes we forget what we agreed to, and that e-mail record is a wonderful dispute-resolver.

Ears vs. Eyes

     Another benefit is in how it leverages the different senses of the people who use it.  Voice mail relies on our ears, and the auditory channel is capable of up to about 8,000 bits of information per second (although voice mail probably uses less than 10% of that).  E-mail relies on our eyes, and our visual channel is capable of up to about 6,000,000 bits per second (although, again, with e-mail we actually use a lot less).

     In practice, with voice mail, I'm in a sequential jail that requires me to listen to each message (each long, interminable, rambling, boring message) in turn, not knowing 'til the end which one was really the most important.  In retrospect, with voice mail, I'd love to have had them presented in the order of importance to me (which is, incidentally, usually quite different from the importance to the caller).

     On the other hand, with e-mail, I can sit down to my computer and show all the new messages that have arrived, and I can open the most important ones first.  Some messages I might not even open (e.g., today's news summary from "Good Morning Silicon Valley") until I can afford more time.

E-Mail Follows Me

     My e-mail address is quite independent of where I'm located, unlike my telephone or facsimile address.  My e-mail address, "CAOgdin@deepwoods.com"  gets mail bound for me to a place where I can pick it up from anywhere in the world...not unlike voice mail.  However, my telephone number is geographically-challenged:  530 tells you I'm in the Gold Country of California, 295 in the town of Placerville.  The last four digits are unique, but tied to the physical address of my office.

     So, a facsimile sent to 530/295-3658 is useless to me while I'm in Tokyo, unless my faxes are intercepted and treated as a unique kind of e-mail.   And, wherever I am in the world, to get my voice mail I have to make a long-distance call to that unique number...unless, again, I have a way to convert that voice mail to e-mail.  Of course, a few of us are lucky enough to have voice-mail to e-mail equipment.  Most of us rely on some human being at that site to transcribe the message into e-mail.