The End of Email?

Email is under attack from all fronts. While overly aggressive spam filtering and spam itself have reduced its reliability, other competing methods of communication may take over some of it's historical roles.

This is especially the case when more than two people are involved in an exchange. Consider a group of people trying to sort out a trip itinerary. First, someone might compose an email with their suggestion. Another person might revise it with their own ideas. Someone else might have a completely different plan in mind. At some point an agreement is reached, but only after dozens of emails.

When it's actually time for the trip, no one is exactly sure which email has the "final" itinerary. The searching in Outlook Express is about as good as anti-spam in Outlook Express. That is to say it hardly works at all.

In contrast, imagine a website where everyone involved could make updates to the proposed itinerary. People would be free to make any changes they wanted. It would also be possible to identify who made what changes, and remove them if needed. When a consensus is reached, the page could be "locked" so that no further editing was possible. This type of website is referred to as a Wiki.

Wiki's share at least one of emails problems. While they don't need spam email protection, they aren't entirely spam free. Some unscrupulous people have been known to vandalize Wiki's with advertising for their websites.

Wiki's will certainly not eliminate email entirely. In the future, they and other competing technologies may considerably change email's roll in internet communications.

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