C O M 1 2 5 W E E K 2 : E - M A I L S

“Jack, have you submitted the term paper due tomorrow morning.” Jane asked
“No, why the rush? I have not even started on it.” Jack replied calmly.
“But Jack, its due tomorrow morning and school closes in less than an hour!” Jane said frantically.
“Oh not to worry, I am going to e-mail Dr. Lim the term papers later tonight.”

E-mail is short for electronic mail which started in 1965 as a way for multiple
users of a time sharing to communicate (Wikipedia, 2006). It is a more up to date method of transmitting data, text files, digital photos, and audio and video files from one computer to another over the Internet.
E-mail users create and send messages from individual computers using commercial programs or mail-user agents (MUAs) (Wikipedia, 2006). A lot of the e-mail programs have a program that enables you to compose or write your own message to send. To send the message, the user has to specify addresses. If the user were to send the message to more than one recipient, it is called broadcasting. The source of the destination is included in the address.
E-mails also contain headers and footers above and below the message. They usually state the senders name, e-mail address, and the date that it was sent. A user then can store, delete, reply, or forward the message to others. Most e-mail programs allow you to attach files and photos to e-mail to send to others. This allows users to append large text- or graphics-based files, including audio and video files and digital photographs, to email messages.

Although e-mail paved the way in the 1960s, it is still being widely used today and will be for centuries to come. People began to develop other methods and ways for sending and receiving messages. Since e-mail was not really an instant method of communication as it requires the user to open the e-mail before he is able to read it. Then came the introduction of Instant Messaging or IM. Instant Messaging is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text (Wikipedia, 2006). The text is conveyed via computers connected over a network such as the Internet. As the name suggests, it is real time instant communication and the other users are able to view and respond to a message sent within a second, depending on the connection speed of the individual users. NET Messenger Service, AOL Instant Messenger, Excite/Pal, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, iChat, ICQ, Jabber, Qnext, QQ, Meetro, Skype, Trillian, Yahoo! Messenge all examples of Instant Messenger services.

As the world progresses towards the Information age, the need for faster and more reliable communication increases. Multi-national corporations and Governments depend and rely heavily on instant communication between their business and Government bodies respectively. The development of e-mail and Instant Messaging changed and paved the way for faster and better communication which allowed these individuals around the world to communicate in real-time without any time loss.
Now did the hype over e-mail and IM increase the need for the Internet? The Internet today was influenced widely with the development of Email and other electronic communication tools. Jones (2002) reports that there were approximately 400 million e-mail messages sent daily in 1995 and almost 16 billion sent daily in 2001, which is an increase of 4,000 percent. By 2005, this had again doubled (Miller, 2006). In short, e-mail is a ubiquitous form or organizational communication which led to a sharp increase in the need for the Internet. The development of e-mail did not solely spark a hype for the rise in the number of Internet uses but it was a combination of various Internet functions and programmers’ which enhanced its usage altogether.

Many new technologies differ in terms of the cues that are available in the communication process (Short, William, & Christie, 1976). New communication technologies offer organizational participants a wide array of interaction and decision making options that can differ from traditional ways of working. Thus not only did the various advances encompass the use of the Internet but also allowed the Internet to flourish and deemed necessary as a global and international asset.

“Hey Jane, I just e-mailed Dr Lim my term paper, are you done yet.”


References
History of the World Wide Web. (2006, September 5). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:00, January 25, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_World_Wide_Web&oldid=73974490

Miller, K. (2006). Organizational Communication, Wadsworth.

Rheingold, H. (1993). Visionaries and Convergences: The Accidental History of the Net. The Virtual Community. New York: Perseus Books. Retrieved from http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/3.html

Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. New York: Wiley

The First Network Email. The First Network Email. Retrieved on December 23, 2005.