From Postal Mail to Voicemail to E-Mail to IM and Beyond

Old-fashioned postal mail dates back to Babylonian times. It introduces the concept of asynchronous communication and, as such, is perhaps the first major productivity enhancement in communications. (We will leave the discussion about smoke signals and drum beating to sociologists.) More modern times witnessed the advent of the telephone. Phone communications provided sharply increased immediacy and synchronicity. Phones meant that businesses could get answers and agreements days faster than any previous method. Phones, however, took communication back to a synchronous modeboth parties had to be simultaneously available, and both had to devote full attention to the meeting. Because of this, synchronous phone communication could not replace asynchronous postal mail; it was still essential to have both written communication (which could be digested at the leisure of the target person and be retained for future reference and legal tracking) as well as the immediacy of phone communications.

Phone communication evolved new fascinating features to address its shortcomings. The most significant feature was the introduction of voicemail in the 1990s. Voicemail made it possible to "reach" someone beyond business hours and either deposit a communication or arrange to have a communication. As the world economy turned more global, this was an important development in allowing businesses to run faster and more efficiently. Voicemail is a purely asynchronous communication method and appropriately boosted efficiency. Today, we just assume that no matter whom we call (person or business), we can leave a message100 percent universal capability within a mere 15 years.

The early years of voicemail were a relearning experience in asynchronous communication for most of us. Too often, messages would be something like this, "Joe, this is Hank, please get back to me." How useful is that? Could you imagine sending a business postal mail like that? Nevertheless, millions of us left such messages for years. After struggling with phone tag and watching lack of immediacy lead to frustration, today's messages are more like this, "Joe, we have the product in stock, and I can get it out to you tomorrow if I hear back from you with the PO number." Finally, "information" is being productively exchanged and in an asynchronous but timely manner. It was this redeveloped social skill that led to the entrance and success of e-mail. (The asynchronous and detail focus of e-mail correspondence felt comfortable to business people after years of voicemail.) Furthermore, voice phone communication completely lacks the utility attribute (per our definition) because it cannot contain an actual business object.

During the late 1990s, the importance of e-mail soared. Finally as ubiquitous as phones, businesses could count on the availability of the e-mail communication mechanism. E-mail offers three dramatic enhancements to human communication:

• It is completely asynchronous yet fast, giving it the quality of immediacy when desired.

• It contains information that would normally be spoken via phone or voicemail and thus is at least as useful as asynchronous voicemail.

• It can actually contain a business object (digitized) along with other message content.

Whereas in a sales situation, a phone call could not actually contain a proposal, an e-mail can. A phone call cannot contain a document, a manual, a price list, a program, or a schedule; how ever, an e-mail can. Those items were formerly relegated to postal mail. So, e-mail ranks very high in terms of time efficiency and utility, and hence its widespread use. Similar to postal mail, e-mails can be retained for later digestion and legal tracking.

E-mail, however, is evolving to a state of lesser and lesser immediacy. Businesspeople are becoming inundated with e-mails to such an extent that the piling up of messages meant that most messages would go unprocessed for many days. Ironically, this phenomenon puts e-mail somewhat back into the category of postal mail, although it is still far more immediate. E-mail overload brought stress upon individuals and led to spotty responses (akin to voicemails piling up and seldom being returned). More technological innovation was due.

Enter instant messaging. Instant messaging (IM) allows one party to get a message directly to another party and have that message "pop up" on the other person's computer screen (typically). Perfectly immediate. Perfectly targeted. And yet, asynchronous as wellthe targeted party can respond when convenient and can be simultaneously performing other tasks, such as phone calls, processing e-mail, or real work (significant efficiency boost). IM is also the first communications technology to introduce happenstance. We can see who is connected and ready to communicatewhether they are physically present of notby virtue of the software panel that displays communities of people and shows exactly who is currently "on." This leads to critical ad-hoc exchanges that can take place within a community that spans the globe's time zones. Most IM packages allow attachment of digital objects as well.

But we're not always at work or in front of our computer, so IM is not a universal and pervasive capability. Yet it did pave the way for one that is: text messaging. While IM was building momentum like crazy, coincidentally so was the pervasiveness of cell phones. Cell phone usage went from being a business traveler's device or an in-caronly device to one that is now as commonly found in someone's pocket as is a wallet (and within a short three-year period). A communication device on its own, cell phones are now the conduit for messaging: text messaging.(Instant messaging and text messaging, by the way, are essentially the same thing; the difference is primarily whether you use a full computer or a personal cell-type device). The significant advance that text messaging brings is universal availability because everyone is tethered to their cell phone at all times in the new Inescapable Data world.

So, we have examined the highlights of communication history from a productivity viewpoint. We have seen that the world operates more efficiently if communication can be asynchronous as well as immediate. Our style of communication has evolved to now better match the technology at hand, and technology has similarly evolved to match our needs. Interestingly, the devices for communication today are exactly the same in business as they are in our personal livescell phones, e-mail, instant messaging, and now cellular text messagingand share the exact same worldwide backbones. This is what the Inescapable Data vision is all aboutthe reach and blur of business into our civilian lives. Let's now shift and examine the new world of everywhere-emitting data.