What is the future of email: Opinions of the creator of Wikipedia, engineers and entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley

In our blog, we write a lot about creating mailing lists and using email as a means of communication. We have previously spoken about why email will never die , and why this tool is so hard to improve . Today we will talk about a specific future email in the field of business communication - this is the question Quora users asked . We present to your attention their best answers.

E-mail put an end to faxing and writing letters by hand. Today it is the main means of communication for business. So what will happen to e-mail, say, in 20-25-30 years? Over the past 20 years, we have not seen any major changes, except for the emergence of a large number of mobile applications.
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1) Phill Wolfe , first sent an e-mail in 1979

To begin with, let's assume what will happen to computer technology and communications in general in 20 or 30 years. I guess they will be:

• more common (uninterrupted connection, Internet of things, etc.);
• mostly worn or embedded (lenses, cochlear implants, displays on the surface of our skin, etc.);
• we will have new services that will help us to better manage this area.

Processing natural language will completely erase the boundaries between spoken and written language, as well as between different languages, be it Hindi or sign language . All you have to do is choose which language you want to communicate in.

Thus, in this hypothetical future, e-mail is an integral part of all communication services. In social media, there are a number of highlights:

• contact search;
• accepting requests;
• receiving information (when we read, listen, watch, feel, feel);
• information transfer (when we speak, draw, sing, write, gesticulate).

Search for contacts. How are you looking for contacts for communication? Currently, services for finding business contacts (for example, a social network LinkedIn) and organizations help us find a person or group of people to connect with them for any purpose. And since in the near future we will be inundated with mountains of personal data, by 2040 we will have a more effective way to search for contacts than social networks, white or yellow pages. People selection systems, thematic social networks, services for searching and organizing events like Meetup , location services will help you find the right person to collaborate or communicate at the right time.

Acceptance of requests. Thirty years later, your software / proxy server / broker will offer you to add new contacts before they find you. Imagine that a spam filter, a notification service and a professional assistant were put together. Services will compete in how well they interact with you, how accurately their filters guess your preferences, and how smoothly they set the time for communication, convenient for the parties. At the disposal of this "mailbox" will be a mass of data to calculate how and when to show you a notification or start a conversation. He will verify the authenticity of the person, take into account the social attainability of the interlocutor (both of you are friends with your ex-husband), previous interaction with you and other people, connections (the person works for company X, which is owned by Y), special notes (your manager said that you must make this call, commercial offers, your alternative pastime (you are standing in line for a concert), your interest in a particular topic, etc. Today, Facebook determines which updates from the thousands will interest you, and in 2040 you will decide which news to receive.

[I can bet that by 2020, Microsoft or Google will know better what letters are of interest to you, based on user satisfaction]

Receiving the information. People like Skype because it’s easy to adjust the degree of communication. The window displays indicators of mood and presence. Instant messaging allows you to send messages asynchronously or in real time. If there are not enough messages, you turn on the microphone and can talk. When you need to see facial expressions and gestures, you go to the video link. After 30 years, new methods of displaying user interfaces will appear, for example, holographic avatars or rapid sequential visual presentation . You can probably voice your tweets in Taylor Swift's voice. You will have new schemas and design work areas for asynchronous messaging. And we can easily and quickly move from one medium of communication or visualization to another.

Transfer of information. In the early 1980s, we did not have the Internet, smartphones, electric vehicles, free video conferencing, private spacecraft and nanotechnology. But since then, only 30 years have passed. By 2040, at least several billion more people will join cyberspace. The emergence of new devices and means of communication will make the difference between those who have already joined cyberspace and those who are far from it, even more significant.

When communicating with another person [via the Web], you can add the content you create — information about what you say or do — to the conversation. The transmission channel converts information into a format that is preferable for you or your interlocutor (handwritten or typed letter, oral speech or dance). You can consider this as the automation of services provided today by services for hearing impaired people.

Your channel will allow you on your part to act as a “producer of the stream”, inserting media objects into the conversation at your will and discretion. You can even combine streams or split them (as is the case with git).

In addition, you can control other aspects of your conversation. Who has the right to transfer this conversation to others? What part? To whom? Do I need to delete the conversation in real time, as today postal services delete emails after the expiration date? Do you allow the anonymity of the interlocutor or the use of pseudonyms?

Notifications. However, e-mail does not only cover interaction with people. For decades we have been trying to introduce machines to work in it. By 2040, trillions of sensors and devices will interact with each other and with people in the process of communication. We will receive notifications from our bodies (mood, pulse, oxygen level in blood, etc.), and all our data will be stored in our personal cloud storage. Electronic mailboxes will check requests from unknown devices and people: is it worth paying attention to the notification sent by the bus you are currently traveling in? If so, in what form should you respond to it, if you are uncomfortable talking, or your hands are busy? In the end, because not all conversations you need to give a detailed answer. It happens, it is enough just to see or listen to the message, and sometimes - quickly grumble the answer or give up. Do not forget to purchase a premium class avatar for your electrocardiograph: in just two percent of its value, any Bollywood star will become its real embodiment.

Work and personal life. Do you remember the days when you had separate mailboxes for work, for personal use, for study, social activities, etc.? A dozen different accounts. “Juggling” with several mailboxes at once is very difficult, even if it helps you not to mix work with your personal life. In the future, you will have a single queue of incoming messages from different areas of your life. Your, apparently, self-aware mailbox will allow you to select different images and styles of communication with different categories of interlocutors. And projects such as The Limited Liability Persona will help create your virtual Alter-ego.

Work and communication. Your question related specifically to business e-mail. Today, emails and other means of communication are integral to the functioning of the labor market and the cooperation of employees. Let us briefly deviate from the topic and discuss the future of work. After 30 years, after wars, natural disasters, depressions, crises, and alien invasions, the basic elements of the workflow will remain unchanged: many of us will sell our time to other people or organizations. Only a large part of this work will be carried out with the help of your communication channels (and even through them). You no longer need separate sets of tools for communication, workflow organization (for example, scheduling, task list, budget, etc.) and interaction. Context providers allow you to add features to your browser that bring together work, workflow and communication. Thus, regardless of whether you are working, having fun or discussing family issues, you will use one means of communication.

Back in 2040, the e-mail as we know it now will exist. But for us, it [in its current sense] will be something like a teletype machine or a punch card: an antique that laid the foundation of social media.

2) Jimmy Wales , founder of Wikipedia and co-founder of Wikia

I think we will solve the problem of spam, and not with the help of Bayesian or any other filtering.

On the contrary, I believe that some service that fully or almost completely “occupies” our life in the future (fortunately or unfortunately) will be able to provide a closed or semi-closed alternative / version of the e-mail without spam. People can do it now, but for now they are not too interested in it.

But closed systems have a flaw. I want any person who writes me a message to also send an email. But if you had to start a Facebook account just to send an email, the site would have been closed long ago. In a closed system, it is very easy to fight spam. If someone sends spam, you simply exclude it from the system.
In place of Facebook, I would try to create “Facebook for domains” to compete with Google. I would promise people that we will save them from spam forever, and any Facebook user will be able to send you emails without hindrance. People who are not registered on Facebook will still be able to send letters through our central system. Thus, we can calculate the intruders and delete their letters before you see them.

3) Matthew Roscher , works at Yseop

I am more interested in future changes not in the format of electronic messages, but in business communication as a whole. I believe that the main problem with electronic messages is that people spend 50% of their time writing them (I want to share a small article that I came across today: “ Research: employees spend half of their workday unproductively ).

I have my own view on productivity: Every time the seller does not stand in front of the buyer, offering him his goods, he wastes his time. And e-mailing and filling out data for CRM does not bring revenue. Every time the doctor fills in the insurance documents and does not treat the patient, the hospital is wasting money. And so on…

Therefore, I think that in the future, artificial intelligence will write and send emails, and people will no longer have to do this. We work slowly, make speech and grammatical errors, exposing our companies in a bad light, and sometimes send letters to the wrong recipients (who is not without sin?).

For example, before people thought themselves and often made mistakes. Then we invented a calculator. Now we just have to enter numbers into it and get a ready answer. Later we had computers and Excel, which greatly increased productivity. The same must be done in the field of business communication. In the 1970s, people bought cars, and with them tools for repairs. Today KIA gives 7 years warranty for its cars in Europe. What happened? Robots have taken on recurring tasks.

4) Roshan Choksi , co-founder and CEO of Bloc

Paul Graham believes that email should be used more as a task list . I have to disagree with him. I think email has a wider scope. This is the only messaging system using push-technology that almost everyone uses. I think email will become something of a universal push notification messaging center.

5) David Lee , engineer, technology freak

The answer depends on how we view email. In terms of the mechanism for forwarding messages, the way they are displayed, the functions of the client, or something else? This is an important question, as our idea of ​​email is likely to change. After 20-30 years, e-mail will work differently and will probably use completely different protocols.

I assume that email will be closer to social networks, but Facebook, Twitter or Google+ are unlikely to be able to replace it completely. The lack of social networks is that they are not based on standards, they are not so common and universal. In addition, many social networks have privacy issues. It is unlikely that a client will want information about his financial condition or health to go to a social network where it can be made publicly available. I could also make a strong case for the fact that social networks are not too different from email. Yes, they are arranged differently and perform other functions, but how does the post on Facebook or Twitter differ from an email?

Twenty to thirty years is a very long period for the field of computer technology. It is possible that some kind of new technology or company will completely change the way of communication between enterprises and their customers. Who knows, maybe Raymond Kurzweil is right about singularity. Then, in the future, enterprises are likely to be able to turn directly to our consciousness.

6) Jonathan Treadway , co-founder of the startup Uniteable, entrepreneur

Despite the fact that today e-mail is the main means of business communication, in the future, most workers and employers will get tired of overflowing boxes. With the constant increase in the flow of information, it becomes increasingly difficult to carry out effective internal communication.

And although I do not receive as much spam on my working e-mail, I, like Jimmy Wales, believe that the existing universal system will be replaced by a closed alternative. I constantly see, hear and say that more and more companies use (or are going to use) chat applications, such as Slack, Skype Messenger or Uniteable for internal communication as a replacement for email.

There are several reasons for this:

1. Chat applications, unlike email, work in real time.
2. Despite the fact that you create an account in the e-mail for work, you often receive letters that are not related to it, so it is difficult to select important information from the rest.
3. Chat applications are much better suited for group calls than e-mail.

Since enterprises usually communicate remotely, it is reasonable to assume that there will be some kind of universal system, like e-mail, which will allow you to communicate with customers.

7) Jacques Schwartz , 40 years worked in Silicon Valley

E-mail integration with organization of work will increase (drag-and-drop attachments, one-touch calendar management, etc.), account protection will avoid receiving emails with unwanted content (editing input data), the management interface will become more convenient (unnecessary information will be go down), the email application interface will be improved (transfer of information from the application to one-touch e-mail), a text and audio overlay function will appear on the video, a check will be automatically performed for non-compliance tvy letters (based on the previous correspondence of the program will be able to identify incorrectly stated the amount, date, just as today they detect grammatical errors in the text), the automation will be improved as a whole.

There will always be a need for asynchronous communication in which several individuals can participate.

As long as they do not invent interfaces capable of reading our thoughts (and it seems that this is real), people will use the keyboard to transmit information. Speaking text messages is great, but often this method is inappropriate or undesirable (you don’t want everyone to learn about a new promising startup in which you invest. Haha).