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From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Looking backwards
Message-ID: <9001131810.AA10915@world.std.com>
Date: 13 Jan 90 18:10:40 GMT
References: <33646@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
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>Why is it necessary to spend $600 for an "e-mail machine"?  For about
>$300, you could put together a system with a keyboard, display, 8 or
>16 bit CPU, and 1200 or 2400 baud internal modem.  The price would
>go down with high volume, too.  Of course, this wouldn't be a general
>purpose computer (though you could certainly program a Mac to emulate
>it), but even those people who didn't need a more powerful computer
>could afford one.  As someone else said, all we need now is a protocol
>for sending messages over a phone line to a phone number.  It should
>be simple and not require a dedicated phone line.  Better still, it
>should not cause normal phones on the line to ring (so letters can
>be sent at night when rates are low).  It's probably possible to do
>this with an auto-answer modem and a PC or Mac, so why shouldn't we
>start now?  There are over 5 million PCs in the country; that's more
>than the number of FAX machines.
>
>ethan

(There are over 10 million PC's in the US, about 30M worldwide)

Yes, I agree with all this.

Worse, I claim most of it exists and has existed for years.

You have traditional Teletype communications (stocks, news wires,
etc.) You have TELEX which is basically a CRT installed in your office
for a monthly fee and a telecom line. You type in a TELEX address and
type an e-mail-like message. There are all sorts of other things out
there like this. ESS's and many much smaller phone switches include
voice mail, do they count? Why not?

Anyone remember those tiny terminals with 9" screens, keyboard which
slid out like a drawer from the body and a phone handset? They were
manufactured for exactly these kinds of applications, hooking up into
Western Union, AT&T/Mail, MCI/Mail and other e-mail networks. They
were pretty cheap as I recall, like $400. You still sometimes see them
in DAK catalogs, I guess the PC's on every desk wiped out that market,
or something.

So it's neither lack of inexpensive equipment nor lack of vendors
offering e-mail services that has impeded its ubiquity. Nor lack of
"big companies backing it" unless you consider Western Union, AT&T or
MCI small companies.

My claim is that there *has* been a fair amount of penetration of
e-mail service everywhere (at, least everywhere that isn't poor.)

The observations that somehow "we" have something "they" don't and
that "they only use faxes" I suspect is, well, not false, but it has
been overstated on this list.

Is it possible we're struggling against a myth? Or if not quite a
myth, something which is in the midst of curing itself rapidly without
all our bright ideas?

We need more facts. Nahhhhh.

        -Barry Shein

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