Is Email 'Bankrupt'? 387
Gary W. Longsine writes "The Washington Post writes about a Venture Capitalist and blogger, Fred Wilson, who recently declared 'e-mail bankruptcy', wiping out his inbox and starting over because he couldn't keep up. Spam is cited as one reason. There have been several public incidents, some cited in the article, where the flow of email is just too much to keep up. 'If there is a downside to completely turning a back on e-mail, it's not one many former users notice. Stanford computer science professor Donald E. Knuth started using e-mail in 1975 and stopped using it 15 years later. Knuth said he prefers to concentrate on writing books rather than be distracted by the steady stream of communication.' Is email just too hectic a communication form for some people? Is email dead?"
I don't know... (Score:5, Funny)
GTD (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why am I suddenly reminded of an episode of DLM?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wow. We both got modded down as "troll". Guess someone doesn't like Dead Like Me [wikipedia.org]....
The reference was that there was an episode of DLM in which Delores was really into "Gettingg Things Done". It was a hilarious episode. To the 14-year-old son of a network exec on a power trip who modded us down, you should get out of your parents' basement and watch it sometime. You might just find it funny.
Or just wait for the movie. I hear they're about to make (at least) one.
Back on topic, though, yes, email
Spam is not a problem for me (Score:2, Interesting)
I have another email address for personal communication. I only give it out to people directly, and I instruct them to not type it in to web forms that say "send this to a friend!" Once in a while they do anyway, and I nag them about it. It usually lasts a good three o
Re:Along with the mainframe (Score:5, Interesting)
Right...only old people in Korea use email right?
Seriously...I keep seeing these things about email and I can only guess it comes from people, maybe younger people, that aren't in the working world yet?
In business...email seems to be the #1 form of communication, be it site wide, or even working on projects within a team.
Most every place I work at...blocks IM for security purposes...so, that's not an option.
Outside of work..well, I'd have to say that email is still my main and prefered form of communication. With some exceptions...I don't talk long on a phone, usually just a quick confirmation "Gonna meet at the Bulldog for beers at 4:30? Yup. Ok, see ya there [click]". I often have numerous thoughts throughout the day pertaining to different people, I find it easier to shoot off an email to each one...rather than call right then. If I were to wait till I had enough to call about...I'd likely forget most of the ideas I had...
That being said, I have one friend that is the complete opposite. He works in IT, but, when he leaves work, it is like he cannot stand to touch a computer at home. He actually gets a bit uptight on emails for trying to plan things, etc...he insists on phone calls in person. It is actually a PITA for me with him at times, as that my other friends do quite well with email planning, etc.
I prefer to hang with people in person when I can, but, when I cannot, I prefer email to communicate with them. Pretty much anytime I'm at home or work, I have at *least* one computer up at all times, with email running 100% of the time...I can communicate almost real time with email if I want..and it happens at times...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I think the advantage is there for email while working...the asynchronous (sp?) nature of it. If I had to answer the phone and turn from the computer EVERY time someone wanted to communicate with me, I'd never get things done...totally breaks concentration. However, I can be coding, or designing or whatever, see emails coming in...I can get t
Of course! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:you could at least attribute your quote (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
But then again, so are computers in general, and cell phones, and almost any other modern communication technique that allows you to exchange information instantly. You as a person are expected to instantly reply to that information. That's like declaring the telephone dead 30 years after invention. It's really annoying sometimes, but no where near dead.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I think she said it a bit more professionally than that:
Like "Go get professionally fucked."
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
I particularly like the guy at work who walks over to my desk and says, "Hey there, did you get my email?" when he sent it about 30 seconds ago. What the fuck is he doing? Sending me an email so he can come over and talk to me about whatever it is that's in the email and then wasting my time even more?
I've started taking the approach of answering "No, but when I do I'll let you know if there are any questions. Right now I'm kind of busy..." What I really want to do is bitch whip him with my mouse.
When properly used, I like email in that it provides an asynchronous means of communication which does not become time dependent. I can send someone an email at 2:30AM when I happen to awake and just check for an answer later that day or the next. If I really need an instant reply, there's always the phone.
But I do think there are a lot of people in the world who's email is effectively broken because they cannot keep up with the spam that comes in.
Could it get better if there were not so many owned machines?
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, exactly. That's the beauty of properly used e-mail. This is particularly true on large, collaborative projects (especially if some of the collaborators are in drastically different time zones) and it's nice for personal communication as well, since it gives you time to sit down and really think about what you're going to say.
The problem (besides spam, of course) is that a lot of people seem to regard e-mail as a kind of clunky-but-convenient chat program. They fire back uninformative five-word responses immediately and expect everyone else to do the same. Now, there are times when this kind of back-and-forth may be useful (e.g. exchanging code snippets) but honestly, mostly it's a useless PITA.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That would cut it down enough to be easily manageable.
I'm afraid that the few people I do want to hear from would think that I'm not worth the effort.
People are too easy to distract (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:5, Insightful)
I apologise to who I am talking to, look who is calling, if its someone that's important I'll answer and ask them to call back or offer to call them back.
If its an unknown or withheld it goes straight to the voice mail - same for any numbers I recognise as probably not being important enough right at that moment and either wait for them to leave (or text) a message or call them back myself later - then I'll usually put my phone onto silent and go back to the conversation, again with an apology
Leaving a phone ringing is equally annoying - its how someone deals with it when they answer it that makes the real difference
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:4, Insightful)
"Sorry, one second", "excuse me one moment", "sorry about that" - but the social niceties still make a difference I think
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. Kind of like saying "Thank You".
I'd heard someone the other day ponder the question of "When did the phrase You're Welcome disappear? It has been replaced by No Problem". Strangely enough, I'd not thought about it much, and realized I too had started saying No Problem rather than You're Welcome, and have been noticing it with annoying regularity. So, now I go outta my way to say You're Welcome to people, hoping it wears off on them at some point.
Re: (Score:3)
Where as 'No problem' is an indication that you didn't really have an impact on me. So, 'Thanks for driving me to the library.' followed by 'No problem' would be a 'I was driving to the grociery store anyway, so stopping half way there to let you out is really
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally it would annoy me if you cut me off for a device unless it was an emergency, so yes I see a need for it.
Ok except for one thing (Score:4, Insightful)
I could understand if its been 1-2 years since cell phones first came out but fuck people....find the button already and put your ringer on silent! This isn't rocket science. We aren't launching missles. All we need is you to put your phaser on stun, Jim.
Ok, I think I've made my point. I will be quiet now and go back to my hole.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There, fixed that for ya.
Seriously. This isn't the old west. That phone isn't your six-shooter. You're not some cyber-samurai traveling like Groo with his trusty sword strapped to his back.
And another thing, unless your phone is somehow different from every other phone/pda/pager with a vibrate feature, the other person does know y
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:5, Insightful)
indeed. I have turned off the "you've got mail" icons and popups and such. I have a rule that will pop up a message if my boss emails me, but otherwise it's silent. When I get bored, I check my email.
That really is the key.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
perhaps they need a class in their middle-management coursework...
This is how you create a sub folder:
This is how you create a rule for filtering your incoming e-mails into a sub folder:
This is how you select a plethora of mail you have no interest in reading and how to delete it:
This is how to click on the little 'x' in the top right-hand corner of the e-mail application to close it and receive no more e-mail for the day(call it your DnD*do not disturb* button)
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People are too easy to distract (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
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Dead (Score:4, Informative)
"Is email dead?"
No.
Yes (Score:2, Funny)
Yet again, I will shake my head that the editors turned down my ww2 tank find story (you know, where these guys in russia go out with metal detectors and find submerged german and russian tanks around kursk -- I think it was -- and restore them)....
Gah!
Re: (Score:2)
The editors hate me
Maybe some
The Relief and Visceral Joy of a Hard Drive Crash (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, two days later, I run into them and they invariably tell me the same thing. They say that the loss of all that stored email was liberating. They feel free to work in the current moment instead of following up on old items that nobody *really* cared about anyway.
They were able to concentrate on what was important to their peers and bosses. Why? Because they told those people "All my email is gone; please re-send to me anything important" and found that what they got back was far less than they had been trying to keep track of previously.
I thought this was all very odd until I remembered how I lost my old ccMail files when we transitioned to Exchange so many years ago. I remember the feeling of having dropped the dead weight I'd been carrying for so long.
My point is that, no, email isn't dead. It is, however, an oppressive presence in the life of many people. Throwing it off and starting over, maybe greatly de-emphasizing its role, is not necessarily a bad thing.
Re:The Relief and Visceral Joy of a Hard Drive Cra (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting...I'm just the opposite. I'm a pretty fast reader, and typist...I generally read pretty much all my email and reply when necessary. I've always been pretty adament about deleting things after I read/reply to them. Until last year or two, I thought pretty much everyone did that. I got into a conversation with friends and was amazed how many of them said things like "I've got
Re:The Relief and Visceral Joy of a Hard Drive Cra (Score:4, Insightful)
Because you'll never know when you'll need it. Perhaps I'll need that CD key from 2 years ago. Or the phone number of the client who I forgot to add to my contacts. Or perhaps I want to know when I started a project, got an account, or switched jobs. Perhaps I'll wnat that paper I wrote two years ago.
There are hundreds of reasons that I can think of why I might need some email from two years ago. But, mostly, it's the reasons I can't think of.
It costs me nothing to keep my email permanently. It's on the server, it's someone else's problem.
Re:The Relief and Visceral Joy of a Hard Drive Cra (Score:2)
Seems you've identified another undocumented feature of a key microsoft product.
Well done!
Re:The Relief and Visceral Joy of a Hard Drive Cra (Score:4, Insightful)
Then my wife got medieval on me and made me throw out 99% of the tapes and started a rule that any CD that didn't get listened to for say a year got ebay'd or sent to the charity shop. And the data and emails? I pulled out the hard drives on the shelf, checked for anything *really* important (the resulting zip file from 7 hard drives was less than 100k), wiped them (properly, before anyone starts to warn me about that) and sold them. At each stage it felt like having a huge weight lifted from my soul.
The long and the short is, I now periodically just blitz my emails and if anything is that important, they'll come back to me. Now I have considerably less stress worrying about all the oustanding jobs I'm supposed to be doing.
It's your problem (Score:5, Insightful)
At any time I've over 3 other email addresses, the key rule with them is to check them daily else I'll... get a backlog.
People whinging about email tell more about themselves than email.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it says that you've never worked in a big organisation where people firing off an email for every trivial point to entire groups is virtually company policy.
Actually I do work in big organisations (Score:2)
No, it says that you've never worked in a big organisation where people firing off an email for every trivial point to entire groups is virtually company policy.
Actually I do work in big organisations & yes I get quite a lot of "cc" mail. I reckon on bad days I get over 50 mails addressed to me as cc. First off: if I am cc I lightly skim mail, mostly I don't respond. Secondly: if someone cc's me on a very detailed mail (> 200 words), that wasn't discussed in advance with me: then they are making a mistake.
Same as everything else: I don't go to all meetings I'm invited to ( I pick the ones I need/want to go to). It's a simple matter of managing your pro
Say 'no' (Score:4, Insightful)
So I say "no." No, I don't have time to think about it. No, I don't have to read this. No, I am not the one to agree with you on this.
I always reply, though, but sometimes just a polite "no". If you don't reply, that's when people start calling. What's next, declaring that the telephone is bankrupt?
E-mail is a useful tool... (Score:2)
Spam has never wasted a second of my time. Anything that makes it through my filter is ignored. I don't even bother to delete it.
If somebody starts sending me bloated useless emails, I just start innoring them.
I just think the problem is that some people who use email do not understand that you just have to ignore junk mail that comes. Just like with snail mail, it goes directly in the recycle bin. Do not bother reading it to make sure it is j
Saving email in the inbox (Score:2, Interesting)
I know you need to save email for CYA situations, but what good does it do if you
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That's what the search feature is for. I have over 4000 messages in my Inbox and I intend to let that grow indefinitely because it makes it ridiculously easy to find exactly what I'm looking for. There's no benefit to moving the messages elsewhere or deleting them, it just makes things harder when you want to find an old message.
You're doing it wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Filtering doesn't even have to be very "advanced" to work. I automatically filter out the low priority stuff in the inbox by finding the terms: "important" "improtant" "message" "letter" "email" and "note" in the subject + anything marked "high priority". It's amazing how unimportant an email is when the subject is "A message from John Smith". I know i
spam filter not enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to hire someone to read my e-mail... (Score:5, Funny)
Crow T. Trollbot
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
He likes me more than you!
Sparsed out Communications (Score:2)
Honestly, if i call someone a real friend i usually just phone or text them. So is e-mail dead? I say no. It's handy, but hardly the thing it might have been years ago.
What we have here is a failure to manage (Score:5, Informative)
* POPFile to weed out the overwhelming majority of the spam. If you've got 4 spams to 1 legit email life seems pretty freaking unimaginably difficult, and nowadays my server inboxes are closer to 100 to 1. My actual client inbox is about 1 to 100 thanks to POPFile.
* Automatically filter automated emails (trade confirmations, bank statements, EBay whatever, anything without a human on the line) to a "I will probably never need this but just in case" folder. This generally requires setting up one rule in your client per business you do business with, or if you're like me you double up on the POPFile goodness and tag them all "auto" then just move based on that tag.
* Check email twice per day, moving every email out of the inbox after it is dealt with. Anything left in your inbox should be a pressing work matter -- if not, move it out, its done. In between my scheduled email checks I only fire it up if I'm looking to make some work for myself. If someone thinks they need a response immediately and I care that they think they need a response immediately, then they have my phone number.
* Get on with life.
VC Blogger = a lot of e-mail (Score:3, Insightful)
My spam filter works at removing the vast majority of my spam, but I only get 150-200 spam per day.
Email works for me because it doesn't force me to stop what I'm doing and pick up a phone. And you can send photos, documents, etc...
Email is far from dead for the average person.
One solution to spam (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One solution to spam (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously too stupid for email (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the rest of us who know enough to keep decent spam filters turned on and updated and have mastered the "secret art" of having several dummy email accounts to enter into various online forms (which will in turn get loaded with spam) will keep using this "bankrupt" communication tool. I get MAYBE 2 - 3 spam emails that get by my filters in a day. I get NONE at my work email (and yes, I send a fair amount of email). I just think it's a cop out for laziness when people claim to be drowning in spam. They've obviously made errors in judgement in the past and have "compromised" their email address. It may be time for a new address which should be protected and provided only to those who need it, but to forsake the entire medium is ridiculous.
Email less of an issue than IM (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so with IM. When that frakking window pops up and starts flashing, it is almost impossible to ignore. I don't even have ANY IM software installed at home, but at work it is mandatory.
I HATE IM!!!
bah (Score:4, Funny)
email dead? (Score:2)
Some people want to spaz out over every bit of communicatio
Manage that email! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Lock me up, then
---Mutt: =ok [Msgs:15816 Flag:16]---
Almost 16K non-spam messages in my mailbox and it doesn't drive me crazy. Of these, 16 are flagged as important, which basically means "I should look at these every day as a reminder for stuff I need to do." And a lot of it is stuff like "Barbecue Friday, 7pm". I rewrite the subjects of important mail so that it's clear at a glance why I chose to flag the message. With a couple hand-crafted
i hate these "email is dead" stories (Score:5, Interesting)
people like Fred Wilson and Donald E. Knuth i think are really just covering for a desire to be less social. which is not a bad instinct if you want to write a book or get some real work done, and to have a good cover story like "my email inbox is chock full, i can't deal with it" is a nice way to brush certain people off who otherwise might get offended
i have 2 email addresses. 1 everyone knows about, and it is usually barely looked at, full of crap that got in my inbox because i needed an email address to sign up for some site, sort-of friends and their useless and retarded forwarded email jokes, recruiters pumping job offers, etc. i'd say i read 1 out of every 25 emails for that address, and barely scan the headlines for the rest
the other address is piped to my blackberry and is paid attention too, as the only people who get it are family, close friends, work, etc
i think that's a good bifurcation to live with: a public email address and a private one. and it's an easy and obvious management idea. anyone could have figured it out
so to play this lame game of skewering email itself is just a cover story for a deeper desire to get away from the constant chatter of life. again, not a bad instinct, but it reveals that "oh noes! email is dead!" is not the real story here, never was, and never will be, even though you will always hear the refrain, time and time again, whenever someone wants to unplug and tell a white lie in order to do that without offending
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, come on. Everybody knows that Knuth's abandonment of his email account was just a clever ploy to increase TeX market share, by forcing everyone to use it to write physical mail to him.
Re:i hate these "email is dead" stories (Score:5, Interesting)
So I concur with you that he just didn't want to talk to people. And that's funny, because email is a wonderfully standoffish way to communicate. I'm not on the hook to respond immediately. You and I don't have to be ready to talk at the same instant, the way you do on the phone.
I just played phone tag for two weeks with one bastard who didn't return most of my calls. If he'd give me a freaking email address he could have dashed off a note with the binary answer I needed in 30 seconds any time he wanted. (Literally, all I wanted was a yes-or-no answer. Dipstick finally called me this morning.)
Of course, this is the same Don Knuth who proposed that programming classes should be taught without computers, and you expel any student who writes a compiler for the language you're teaching in. He wanted to get students to be good at paper debugging. So maybe the inventor of TeX is just a luddite.
Re:i hate these "email is dead" stories (Score:4, Interesting)
I've communicated with Knuth, and I found him to be anything but a standoffish, asocial curmudgeon. I thought I might have found a typo in his book, and thought I might have a chance at getting one of his famous checks that he sends to people who find errata. (If I'd gotten one, then, like most recipients, I would have framed it instead of cashing it. It turned out that the "typo" was just an unusual-looking diacritical mark on a Hungarian name.) He wrote back a very friendly, gracious email, with an explanation. Knuth doesn't have anything against social contact or communication AFAICT -- he simply wants to have some control over how it takes place and how much of his time it's going to take up.
I feel the same way, really. The college where I work gave me an email an email address when I started teaching there, in 1996. I haven't read any mail sent to that address since 1997. (I believe my box is actually over its quota, and therefore messages sent to it are bouncing.) One of the reasons I don't read mail sent to that account is that there's an easy to use broadcast address, of the form mydivision@myschool.edu, that causes mail to go to that address. Therefore any address on that broadcast list gets a ton of what's come to be known as "occupational spam."
For the e-mail address I actually do use, I use it on my own terms. For example, I have a filter that automatically bounces mail sent in html-only format, or mail that comes with images as attachments. With my students, I require them to use a web-based form to send me mail, because otherwise I get, e.g., mail from students with aol addresses, whose names I can't infer from the mail, and mail with attachments in Word format which could have been sent as text.
Re: (Score:2)
Is email dead? (Score:2)
I use snail mail sparingly. In my mind, it's certainly deader than e-mail, but neither is "dead." What a stupid statement to make or question to ask. E-mail isn't going to disappear. God, we can only hope that it improves and, granted, it hasn't improved much. Some sort of certification system to put an end to spam and other unwanted
No, but the way we deal with it will change (Score:2)
I agree (Score:2, Insightful)
I actually have to agree with this talk about bancruptcy. Honestly, email has gotten to the point where I can't keep up with it either. I'm a software developer, and I get so many emails at work that it can take me at least a couple hours in the morning just to read them all. When you only have an 8 hour workday, and two hours of it is spent emailing, that's clearly bad for the company. I delete 50% of them at least without even looking at more than the subject and senders name, because if it appears to be
Re: (Score:2)
Also, I know that email is not used for really critical communication. I know I can just delete the email, because if it is something really urgent, someone will call me about it.
You MIGHT want to clarify that with everyone in the world who will send you email. I agree that email is not an appropriate medium for critical communication but that doesn't mean it doesn't get treated that way. I've made it a policy where I work that if anyone has anything critical for me, they need to speak with me in real-time about it. Otherwise they will need to assume it won't get read in the time they expect it to.
Automated emails by machines should be banned, or at least restricted. As a developer, I am constantly getting emails from servers telling me that some job has run successfully, or that some automated procedure is done, and I couldn't care less.
Then modify the jobs. What I find happening many times is that when som
I think Yogi Berra said it best (Score:3, Insightful)
Blackberry's (Score:2)
A couple of weeks ago, I was at dinner with a co-worker and a couple of his friends. One of his friends is a first-year attorney at a big law firm. He got demanding messages from work about every 10 minutes during dinner. I could see the stress on his face when he got the messages. That Blackberry surely did not improve the quality of his life.
And most of the global e-mail is pushing Viagra or pumping penny stocks. The 3rd large category is someon
It can be controlled: email is by no means dead (Score:4, Insightful)
It's kind of like spending money for a car, then find out you have to change the oil, the timing belt, rotate tires, and so on. Those whose inboxes are constantly full are idiots not to use intelligent spam filters, keep their email addresses from being harvested by bots, and other common-sense use policies.
Every once in a while, it's just fine to get away from your email app and breathe. Voicemail was invented to allow people to control their phone time, and there are numerous ways to prevent email overload. As a friend of mine once said, we're the humans-- they're the computers-- we're in control.
Never throw anything away. (Score:2)
Protection (Score:2)
Confirmation from.. (Score:4, Funny)
Is email dead? (Score:2)
<sarcasm>Yes, of course email is dead.</sarcasm>
Some people have a hard time dealing with distractions, some people have a hard time prioritizing, so let's blame it on the medium. These are probably the same people who had huge piles of paper and couldn't keep up with the deluge of paper mail and memos twenty years ago.
Other people, myself included, love email. I telecommute full time (from across the country) and could not do my job without email. I have almost all of my email about back
Great... (Score:2)
Filter your inbox (Score:3, Interesting)
I run everything inbound through a spam filter first. Anything flagged as spam gets ignored until the end of the day, then I make a quick pass through to see if anything jumps out at me as valid and delete everything else. The stuff that makes it into my inbox I ask three questions about:
80% or more of my mail gets deleted within 48 hours of arriving (or, at work, filed in the "preserve the evidence for the upcoming court-martial" folder).
Waaaah! (Score:2)
Email vs everything else (Score:2)
Really more generic issue (Score:2)
too many emails to process in too many email addresses (god- I have 5 or 6?)
too many posts on too many message boards to read and process (active on 7 to 10 forums)
too many television shows to keep up with (with resulting societal fragmentation-- no "water cooler" shows to bond with)
And the "fix" for email gets closer (Score:2, Informative)
It has to be backwards incompatible so it doesn't just bring along all the spam problems, and to do that enough people have to say "I'm done with email and will no longer have an email address, I'm using this instead if you want to "email" me you'll have to too".
Just like all such things a critical number
more than just talking (Score:4, Insightful)
So...maybe to the old school UNIX admin who uses MUTT as their mail client.....email might be dead, but in the big time business world, it is very very much alive.
A little time invested in filters goes a long way. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they'd take a couple hours out of their busy day, just once, to create some sensible automatic filtering rules in their email client, I suspect it would pay off for most of them pretty quickly.
The truth is, most people receive regular emails from specific addresses, so these could be sorted just by a basic "if mail is from xxx@yyy.com, then
"Email is bankrupt" != "Wilson's email bankruptcy" (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one who noticed that the headline doesn't match the summary?
"Is Email 'Bankrupt'?" implies that there is a major problem with e-mail itself, while the summary talks about "blogger, Fred Wilson, who recently declared 'e-mail bankruptcy', wiping out his inbox and starting over because he couldn't keep up." It sounds like Mr. Wilson's e-mail got out of hand. This is like posting the headline "Is money 'bankrupt'?" with an article about someone's poor financial planning causing them to file (financial) bankruptcy.
There are really two separate issues that are getting "smooshed" together into one:
The two questions are certainly related, but they are not the same thing!
No, but it is getting more problematic (Score:3, Insightful)
However, this cannot last forever. Spam has slowly increased after greylisting from none to 2-3 a day, as the spammers zombie hosts start acting more like normal RFC-compliant hosts. Spam stocks make it through after dutifully waiting out the 20 minute delay.
In short it is an arms race. E-mail is getting less and less useful, even with the technological solutions like greylisting, filtering on expressions, etc.
Celebrities are edge cases. (Score:3, Insightful)
Spam, now, that's a real problem... and it's a pity that the Direct Mail Association has consistently fought against any legislation that would have any real effect on spam, one assumes they share the common but misguided notion that it's impossible to create good anti-spam legislation that would allow the legitimate use of email in marketing (no, that's NOT an oxymoron).
But absent effective legislation what one might call "excessive promotional speech" is a problem for anything that makes communication more efficient. Were people to abandon email for some other medium, they'd find that clogging up just as quickly.
Re:Its morally bankrupt. (Score:5, Funny)
So that's why I keep getting all of those Viagra and Cialis spams.
Re:Its morally bankrupt. (Score:5, Interesting)
But when it comes to dealing with large quantities of email, the best tactic I find is to delegate. Reply with the standard "Interesting point, what do you think is the best solution?" and then when they get back... "Great!"
Also, I use Thunderbird - I sorely wish someone would develop an addon which ranks email by historical levels of correspondance, length of correspondance, domain, etc.. Those who you write a lot to at length are bound to be more important, and need immediate attention.
Re:Its morally bankrupt. (Score:4, Informative)
Why not set up your own email server? It is much easier to write rules and such to process your email on that end, rather than trying it on the client end. It is pretty easy...even for something fairly complex like virtual hosting (slightly outdated) [gentoo.org] using Gentoo and Postfix. You can write your own scripts to handle incoming/outgoing email, filter it, alter it...etc. All for free, and just exactly like YOU like it. Heck, run it for your friends too...and then they can benefit from your work too and have better email experiences.
Not rocket science..just takes a little effort. I'd also recommend the O'Reilly book on Postfix, has great explanations on email, how the protocols work..and how to set things up.
Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)