105159 Resource 102363 102466 102466 1129428462196 1132403885533 Controlled What does the next email system look like?

It's time to start thinking about the next generation of software, but what drives us

Their was a fascinating article recently in the Wall Street Journal ("Rage Against the Machine,"Thursday October 8, Opinion Page, available online by subscription only) by David Gelernter, professor of Computer Science at Yale. (If you wanted to read more about Gelernter and some of his ideas he has an entry in Digerati <A href="http://www.edge.org/documents/digerati/Gelernter.html">here</A>.) I waited to write about it because it really startled me at first and it took a while to digest. Here's the first paragraph: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> "I hate our computers. Our core software tools are old; not only are they old but they are obsolete; and not only are they obsolete but they were never that great to begin with." (Emphasis is all his)</BLOCKQUOTE> Gelernter takes aim at 4 technologies that he says contain fatal flaws: The file system, email, the desktop user interface and the Web. He has specific issues with each one of these and I won't bother to go into a lot of detail, but suffice to say that all of these technologies are poor first attempts at using a computer usefully, for people and organizations. I think Gelernter is right on the money. I wrote about what a poor tool email is for most uses <A href="http://sightlog.sightlinesconsulting.com/public/item/102792">in a previous post</A>. Essentially, the argument is that email as a means of collaboration within an organization, or between an organization and its customer/prospects/members/citizens, fails entirely. When one or both halves of the private email conversation leaves the organization, the inbox goes black and all of the knowledge equity contained in the inbox is lost forever. Organizations are actually losing their own memories to email's 'black inbox'. For things like "Don't forget that there's a meeting at 3:00 today," email is great. But to discuss the agenda of a meeting, or go over decisions and ideas that came up, email falls down. It's the electronic equivalent of two cans and a string, when it comes to important communications and collaboration. Likewise, Instant Messaging, is another useless tool when it comes to important communications. It's great for teenagers who treat it like passing notes in class. But again it is an immature technology, not in the sense that IM itself needs to grow up, but that it represents an immature electronic communications field. Our software needs to grow up. Ok, so I have once again described the problem, but what's the answer? Well, a few other observations first. Why did we adopt email and, to a lesser extent, IM so quickly? Well, they are both fairly easy to use. That's true. And like all new technologies, when they start to move into the mainstream we really don't have an option. It is also convenient, and quick. But I think one of the other things people like is that both email and IM offer privacy to those conversing. I am the sole author of my emails and I receive emails, normally, that another author decides to send to me. Everything else is spam. Any new technology that we bring to the market must execute with these values: Easy to use, quick, convenient, private. It should not be accessible to spam. The Organization must resolve to make the tool mainstream. The next generation of electronic communications must be around the things in our organization that are important. In other words, it must be interoperable. So if we are communicating with or about clients then it must be part of our CRM system. If we solve network problems for clients then it is not enough to send emails to the client, receive emails from the client and email our colleagues about the client. All of these communications need to be bound to the client's record to create value - knowledge - about the client. Email is probably not going to go away any time soon. It has its uses. I like hearing from Amazon that they have received my order. But for real collaboration we need better tools. And I think that they're coming. 10 application/xml false client knowledge collaboration crm interoperability interoperable Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 69.218.156.212 69.218.156.212 tfoydel false true false false true 205861 false false true false false false true 102363 blog blogsite/SightLines/web