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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Musings on Electronic Mail
Message-ID: <1374@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Tue, 3-Mar-87 14:25:09 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.1374
Posted: Tue Mar  3 14:25:09 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Mar-87 00:44:20 EST
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(Note from the submitter: sorry - but this must be kept anonymous if posted 
since I am involved with one of the unannounced products.  I don't think this 
reveals anything, but I know that they are quite paranoid)

In your posting you say:

>To compose the message, I fully expect at *least* the same ability to
>send stuff that I have with a regular mesage.  I have received (paper)
>mail with cartoons, articles clipped out of magazines and newspapers,
>photographs, and even (ahem) items of clothing.  While we can argue that
>transmitting physical things via an electronic medium is ridiculous, I
>think the concept of being able to trivially add doodles, attach pictures
>and other text and so on are *vital* to the success of the medium. 

There are a number of R&D efforts along these lines.  I recall one at
BBN which has been written up occasionally.  The R&D efforts involved
too much expensive equipment to be practical for anyone outside a few
very rich government agencies.  However, there are already postings in
the mac.binaries where the full repertoire of Mac graphics tools can be 
sent electonically.  There are also products emerging that are specifically 
aimed at various commercial markets to support the electronic shipping and 
annotation of documents.  In fact, if you expand your definition of electronic 
mail to include the new generation of facsimile equipment this capability is 
already widespread.  All of these are low enough cost to be commercially
affordable.  Personal affordability should arrive within a decade.

The only real gap is in the user interface arena, where nothing is yet
available that can compete with the ease of use and expressive power
of pencil, pen, or crayon.  Here I don't even know of any close contenders.


[Note from the moderator: The system being discussed here is in fact the
 Diamond-II multimedia mail system from Bolt Beranek and Neuman (BBN), a
 part of the EXPRES project (a DoD funded project for the submission and
 tracking of documenents).  I think it would be very interesting to have
 someone from BBN reply to this comment about the expense of the Diamond
 system (a Sun 3/75 to start) and it would also be interested to have some
 people from the EXPRES project discuss it here...      --- Dave]