John C. Dvorak has a nice piece in PC Magazine called “9 Reasons E-Mail Is Dead“. He has composed a list of behaviors or features of e-mail that has all but killed it as an efficient tool of communication. I have sort of written on his first complaint, “The ever-changing address”, previously at Useless Nexus when I wrote about what a terrible idea it is to use your ISPs email address. Over all, I agree with his assessment despite my love of email.
I once wrote a piece on my ideal of a modern communication tool. The idea was basically one drop box that recieves all the messages sent to me from the many places I am. This box would recieve messages from Twitter, e-mail, SMS, comment replies, voicemail, and all the other bacn that websites and communication services generate. This box would have an intelligence that would allow me to route these messages to the locations I want to receive it based upon who sent it, the time of day, or where I am. Then I could reply in the form I choose. But my response would be routed back to the sender and delivered the way they want to recieve it.
Communication message how I want, where I want from whom I want, when I want it!
I think the day that technology will make this possbile is approaching. Google Voice/GrandCentral may be a move in the right direction. If Google integrates Google Voice with Gmail and GTalk and allows for the same management capability and transcription Google Voice then it might be possible.
This doesn’t solve a single porblem of John C. Dvorak‘s list. But it at least gets each individual the power to choose how they want to communicate. The future could be very cool!
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