by Carol A Westbrook

There was a time when getting an email was a rare event, a special event. Remember the 1998 film, “You’ve got mail,” in which Meg Ryan meets Tom Hanks in an online chatroom? Not recognizing that they are business rivals, they eventually fall in love, in what is perhaps the first online romance. Email was still a novelty in 1998, since mail programs had only been around for a couple of years, and the world wide web itself had only been available for 6 years.

That was then. Now, there are over 200 unsolicited emails coming into my mailboxes each day–so many that I can’t find the ones from my friends or colleagues amid the mess. And due to my junk mail filter–a necessity nowadays–I risk missing e-bills and important notices. Amid this mess, so many of my friends have just stopped using email that I can’t be sure that a message I send will be read. I have to reach them by other methods, sometimes text or Instant Message, an even old-fashioned phone call!

What happened to email?  Spam happened. Read more »