Chapter 1: The Rise of Email

Not too long ago, I shared the count of unread emails in my iPhone inbox on Twitter. This sparked a humorous competition among various internet personalities, some of whom boasted about having—believe it or not—over a million unread emails. While we laughed at the absurdity, it also highlighted a significant issue we face in managing a tool that has been integral to our lives for nearly four decades.

Many of us have clung to the same email addresses for years; a friend recently received a congratulatory email from Yahoo, marking her 24 years with the service (which debuted in 1997). My Hotmail account, now 26 years old, still exists, supported by Microsoft through Office and Outlook, even though the original domain is defunct. Numerous people still maintain their old AOL accounts, refusing to let them go.

Email has become a generational staple, forming a continuous loop of frustration where we struggle to keep up, lose track of what’s important, and joke on social media about all the messages we’ll never read. This makes me nostalgic for a time when managing our inboxes wasn’t a part of our daily lives.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, I traveled across the country interviewing electrical distribution companies about their accounting and inventory systems. Most of these companies relied on dummy terminals connected to mainframes, but a few were beginning to adopt third-party digital mailboxes—essentially servers that multiple entities could access via modems—to facilitate communication with customers. Customers could place orders into these inboxes, which companies could then retrieve and fulfill.

At that time, no individual employee had their own email or inbox; everything was managed on a server. I remember thinking this was a clunky solution, unaware of how email management would evolve.

A few years later, the PC revolution transformed the landscape, bringing local processing power and storage to millions of desktops. However, in 1989, most email development was still geared towards businesses. Consumers communicated within dedicated services like CompuServe, while businesses sought cross-platform communication through proprietary services like MCI Mail, which was partially developed by internet pioneer Vint Cerf.

Platforms like EasyLink, AT&T Mail, and MCI had tens of thousands of subscribers, and while email addresses were publicly listed, inter-platform communication required special agreements. Most users accessed their accounts only through computers, although companies could pay substantial fees to allow employees to check their emails over the phone.

The volume of "electronic mail," as it was called back then, was limited by the costs associated with sending emails (MCI Mail charged 45 cents per message). In essence, early email was complicated, and there was little incentive for it to become a central aspect of daily life.

When I joined PC Magazine in 1991, they were still using MCI Mail, and I felt a thrill when I received my account. However, I remember feeling disheartened when we switched to cc:Mail. Like many early email systems, cc:Mail was not internet-based; it operated on a centralized LAN server for email storage and management. Users accessed their emails via desktop PCs, which made checking mail an occasional task rather than a constant obligation.

The advent of the World Wide Web was a pivotal moment for email. Instead of choosing one direction, we embraced both corporate and personal email management. The mid-to-late 1990s saw an explosion of personal email systems. I cherished the concept of managing personal conversations away from corporate scrutiny.

During this decade, email addresses became more crucial than phone numbers. It's astonishing to think that business cards once lacked email addresses. Imagine a world where only a select few had access to your email inbox.

For decades, we shared our home and work phone numbers (remember the White and Yellow Pages? They're now online), and until the rise of robocalls, our phone lines were quite manageable. When I first started using email, I opened it with the same anticipation I had for physical mail. Now, I approach it with trepidation. Our inboxes are insatiable, only limited by their capacity, which can accommodate hundreds of thousands of emails.

Email systems evolved without considering the consequences of making sending and receiving messages nearly effortless. Most people don’t send out 50 pieces of physical mail daily due to the effort and expense (those stamps add up!).

The development of email has removed nearly every barrier. No more complicated command lines or restrictions on communication between different email domains. All you need is an email address, a keyboard, and an internet connection.

The final barrier was our desktops and laptops. While one might take their laptop on the go, you wouldn’t constantly check your email every few minutes. The smartphone has made inboxes inescapable.

Despite my fondness for email, the Twitter game of comparing overflowing inboxes was a cry for help. Email is on the verge of a new era, and I’m still waiting for someone to ignite that change.

Chapter 2: The Burden of Overload

In a world where email has become a burden, it begs the question of how we got here.

The video titled "I Think Something Terrifying Is Buried In My Backyard" delves into the overwhelming nature of our digital lives and the depths of our inboxes, reflecting on the emotional weight they carry.