The subject of this year's April Fool's editorial is one of the most loved and hated inventions of the 20th century — email. I know of no other ubiquitous technology that can make fools of its users so quickly. Email is also extremely easy to abuse, and I for one am among the worst of email abusers. Yes, I have on occasion hidden behind email to avoid a painful phone call. Yes, I keep messages in my inbox for months, even years, if so allowed. I am a packrat by nature, and thanks to email I have escalated this tendency to a full-blown personality disorder. Email presents a nasty dilemma to many of us: ignore some messages outright, or fragment our daily schedule beyond bearability, answering each and every one. In keeping with the fragmenting nature of email, this month's editorial is a grab bag of musings and observations.
Marc Briand
- Within my pathology lurks at least a half-baked excuse for hoarding messages. That is, I regularly use my email client as an ad-hoc project manager and contacts database. I can do this because my email client has a nifty search facility — far niftier than Windows Explorer. What I'd really like to see is an email client that also serves as web browser, project manager, and personal knowledge base, all rolled into one. If you start selling one and making big bucks, you can send royalty checks to Editor-in-Chief, c/o C/C++ Users Journal ...
- I have finally committed the classic email gaffe of sending a rather uncomplimentary comment (as in, "this person is a genuine pain in the ___") to the person who was the subject of the comment. Naturally, I was mortified, and dearly wished for an Unsend button. Maybe vendors of email servers could produce a special version for cranky magazine editors and other high-stress infoworkers, with a built-in one-minute delay.
- First there were answering machines, then came universally despised voice mail, now email. Ironically, with each new communication enabling technology, we have new excuses to avoid communicating. Email in particular is great, because the Internet is so consistently nondeterministic. As stock excuses go, we may have passed a sociological point of no return when usage of "the server went down" surpassed "the dog ate my homework."
- Ah, but email is the great equalizer, you say. Where else, but on the Information Superhighway, could anyone on the planet send an email to Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, or Billy Graham? That's right, we can all be personally ignored by the rich or famous person of our choice. Or more likely, by the gigantic corporation, if we happen to have a complaint. Companies like J.C. Penny are now using email filtering programs, which use AI techniques to either provide an automated response or route emails to the appropriate department. Here's a little tip, if you want to reach a real human being: include trigger phrases in your message, like "really angry," "frustrated," "fraud," "my lawyer," etc. (Do not say things like "bomb," "AK-47," or "I'm comin' down there to take you out.") I expect this trick will be good for a few months, anyway, until everyone catches on and the email filters have to be made more sophisticated. I foresee an evolutionary process here. Who knows, the Internet might become the incubator of the first real artificial mind.
- You say e-mail, I say email. When new words are in the process of formation, they tend to go through permutations. Most notoriously unstable are the compound words — hyphens and spaces appear, disappear, and move around, as the word slips through the boiling pot of popular usage. It is a treacherous time for editors. CUJ settled upon "email," and naturally, popular usage went to "e-mail." Sigh. Now what do we do with words like "e-commerce?" As so often happens, we must choose between an awkward consistency (ecommerce) or trendy inconsistency (e-commerce), or change our style rules yet again. Methinks this makes a ripe subject for a subsequent editorial, for programmers face much the same issues in choosing style rules and naming conventions. Stay tuned.
Editor-in-Chief