COM 125 Week 2

Email








Communication technology has gone a long way from the days of tying notes to the legs of pigeons to email. You do not have to worry about the postal service going on a strike if you happen to live in the world’s largest democracy. Sending messages has never been easier. Overseas letters could take up to
one to two weeks to reach the recipient. Now it just takes a couple of minutes because of Email. Fascinating? You bet! The mere term 'Email' refers to both Internet e-mail systems and Intranet systems (2007).

“No man is an island”. This famous quote highlights the fact that men can never live alone and has an inherent need to communicate with other people. However, this need of him became an obsession as he wished to connect everyone with access to Internet. This has made him reach great heights in the communication arena.


Imagine life without the Internet or Email? How would you keep in contact with your friends overseas? Through long distance phone calls, which makes you get a heart attack upon seeing the cost. The Internet has certainly revolutionized the way we think and function. As mentioned by Howard Rheingold, computers would have become a luxury only used by certain individuals if there were not visionaries like Douglas Engelbart (Rheingold, 1998). Live is indeed like the movie Sliding Doors. What would happen if we chose Path A over Path B? If Engelbart was disillusioned after his initial attempts to connect everyone, we would probably be still penning our thoughts on paper.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was developed by the United States Department of Defense(2007). The ARPANET led to the development of the Email and was the predecessor of the Internet. It is interesting to note that Email was founded in 1965, before the Internet. Electronic mail was initiated because it was “a way for multiple users” of a “time-sharing main computer” to interact with one another (2006). Six years later, Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer, created the standard format for sending e-mail, which we are familiar with. The @ sign was used to differentiate between the “user name” and the site name (2006) . A year later, Larry Roberts from Arpanet pioneered the “first email management program”.
It had the capability to list, choose, forward and reply to messages (Left, 2002). Emails comprise of two components; header and body. The header is structured and has the addresses of the sender and the receiver, the date and the title of the e-mail. Unlike the header, the body has an unstructured text and may allow the sender to leave their signature at the bottom of the e-mail (2007).

Personally, Email is a way for me to communicate with my friends both here and in overseas. At one point, my text message bills used to be very high. My father’s constant complains led me to start using Email more frequently, as he was the one footing the bill. This became a habit of mine and now I prefer Email to text messaging, as it is more convenient.

The benefits of Email are numerous. On the other hand, the wonders of technology always come with a price especially with the advent of Spam, viruses and privacy issues. According to www.dictionary.com, Spam is “unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups”. My personal experience with Hotmail has brought me to a point of irritation with all the Spam. The same website defines a virus as “a segment of self-replicating code planted illegally in a computer program, often to damage or shut down a system or network”. ACME is a computer virus, which destroys all files on a computer through e-mail. Viruses like these, makes it a must to scan any e-mail before opening it. Email privacy is a much-debated issue ever since emails became part of our daily lives. It is easy for others to “intercept and read messages” because e-mail messages go through “intermediate computers” before reaching their target (2007). In a hypothetical situation,the secret you were telling your best friend over e-mail is no longer a secret as someone else was able to read it too. Try to picture the anger and fustration that would arise from within you once you learn the truth. Chances are that you probably would not rely on e-mails to send intimate or personal information.

References

(2007, January 24). E-mail. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email

Rheingold, H (1998). Chapter Three: Visionaries and Convergences. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from Howard Rheingold’s Virtual Community Web site: http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/3.html

(23 January 2007). Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Retrieved 25 Januuary, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

(20 August 2006). History of the Internet. Retrieved January 27, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_Internet&oldid=70771572#Email_and_Usenet.E2.80.94The_growth_of_the_text_forum
Left, S (2002,March 13). Email timeline. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from Guardian Unlimited Web site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,666750,00.html