A tale forces itself on me sometimes. First, I read a NY Times piece that raised a question: Could Gen Z free the planet from email? . (The solution is not any.) Then, I had a pal of a pal ask me should they could just replace email with Slack . The solution this time around: Hell no.

Here’s why.

First, there is a reason we have been using email for many years now. It works just. Really, it’s that easy. In particular, today the version of email that the vast majority of us use, which is in line with the Internet RFC-822 standard, works for everyone everywhere. You may work in Antarctica having an email domain ending in “.aq,” but I could send you a contact with the address JaneDoe@SomePlaceReallyCold still. aq and my note shall reach you in a couple of seconds.

It didn’t was previously that way. Among my first jobs was helping run the Goddard Space Flight Center’s email systems in the first 1980s. There, for my sins, I was on the help desk, and in those full days there is no standard email addressing system; there were over twelve. Adding salt to the wound, they couldn’t talk right to each other. A message could possibly be got by you from, say, your web account to your buddy on BITNET or your organization partner on MCI Mail , but to accomplish it, you’d package your message such that it could go through a gateway between your networks. It was challenging. (And let’s not discuss UUCP and X.400 email systems.)

Then, in magic of good sense over standards, everyone agreed that RFC 822-style message and addressing transfers made sense. Today that people all have our_name@this_company it really is.whatever addresses.

Another advantage of this process: RFC 822 can be an open standard. You don’t need to pay anyone to utilize it. Yes, you need to cover the account itself probably, but no-one pays the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to utilize the standard.

And, that’s where individuals who answered the Creative Strategies’ 2020 survey on what people interact online missed the boat. Sure, younger people may speak to each other and use one another using Slack , Instagram , and Zoom calls. But all those are proprietary programs, and the annals of tech has taught us these platforms don’t last.

For instance, it wasn’t that way back when that everyone used AOL IM , Facebook , and Skype to speak to each other. Of these, AOL IM is dead , Facebook is losing its interest Generation Z , and Microsoft is replacing Skype with Teams .

Others, in accordance with this scholarly study, now work together probably the most using Google Docs , Zoom , and Apple’s iMessage . Okay, fine. But additionally to my earlier objection to proprietary platforms, what goes on whenever your company partners with a small business that uses Zoho or Microsoft 365 for shared documents? Or prefers Google Meet or Cisco Webex to Zoom? For example, since iMessage is totally linked with Apple , how will you speak to someone whose company uses only Samsung phones?

Email, alternatively, is universal. It runs on everything. I understand Outlook doesn’t look similar to Gmail or whatever your email client of preference, nonetheless it all ongoing works exactly the same way and the messages, lacking failures, always make it happen.

What’s never to like? Well, spam to begin with. But that’s why we’ve spam filtering. I run SpamAssassin on my business servers, but there are lots of other easier-to-run anti-spam programs. Included in these are MailWasher , used on servers or PCs; ZeroSpam / HornetSecurity , a cloud-based service; and ContentCatcher , a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) email spam detector. Several scheduled programs include phishing and malware protection defenses.

Another nagging problem is that people have a tendency to get buried with email floods. The answer is filtering. Most email programs include tools that enable you to sort messages based on who sent them, if the sender is well known, or by subject material. With just a little thought, it is possible to turn these in your favor. For example, simply by sorting mail into “Mail from people within your company” and “Mail from outside your organization,” you’re a lot more than halfway to cutting your email to a manageable load.

Email also offers another fundamental advantage over audio and messaging and video conferencing. Email enables visitors to work regardless of working arrangements or time zone together. Also it lends itself to archiving and record-keeping readily.

Both of these reasons alone now make sure that for, and forever onward, email shall remain the principal way business communications have finished. Instant messaging programs, video-conferencing platforms, they come, each goes. But none can replace email.

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