Junkyard

When I opened my inbox this morning, as always, I saw thirteen useless emails. Sitting on the top, posing in deep blue color, these mails had no right to be there in the first place. I mumbled: Welcome to the junkyard!

If you are losing faith in email technology, welcome to the "Email is so very useless" club. My personal statistics: I answer less than 10% of emails that struck my inbox. Even so, I am able to answer all the emails I am supposed to. Well, almost.

The model of free emails has taken its toll on us: we literally have to scrable through a mammoth pile -- everyday -- to find what we really need. Sure, technologies like "spam guard" help us, but only to some extent. Infact, "Spam guard" itself becomes a victim sometimes. Consider this: I send an email to a business but do not receive a reply. I follow the wait-for-two-days ettiquette, and then become impatient. I blast the customer care representative only to find later that the mail was promptly replied to the same day but landed in my "Bulk" folder. The result: a sinking guilt feeling.

Such experiences make me ponder on the demise of this ill-fated technology. But it continues to grow. In today's world, businesses want us to use email, even for the official communication. Sure, its use would help reduce their costs, but is it really saving us from the clutter?