You got a few people working on something and you seek for an efficient way to communicate (ideas, news, messages, etc.) online. This guide gives you an overview about what you could expect in the past and what you should ask for nowadays. Mails According to Wikipedia, the first mail was sent in 1971. The access to a network we call Internet today was quite limited in these early days. Users have been mostly universities, and I guess, not everyone, but mostly the STEM disciplines Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. So it comes at no surprise that mails are perceived as inconvenient and antiquated.
Oh God, It's Raining Newsletters
On the rise of newsletter production, consumption, and monetization, and how email is one of the most powerful and resilient publishing platforms.
‘I Have a Folder in My Email Called Hate Mail’: Academic Public Engagement, Digital Hate and the Unequally Distributed Risks of Visibility
Public engagement through �traditional� and social media is an increasingly important way for scholars to communicate research w
A Theory of Messaging Styles & Ghosting.
Online communication tools serve many purposes. So does silence.
From Space, to Time
This post is the text version of a talk I’ve been giving at several conferences (and I plan to give it a couple more times). I have spent many years observing and building things on the web and this is one of the main trends I’ve been…
Email explained from first principles
Modern email is a patchwork of protocols and extensions. Here is one article to understand them all.
How It All Started: Pre-W3C Web and Internet Background
1971: Ray Tomlinson of BBN creates email program to send messages across a distributed network.
Early Internet | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
better-email | sTeam Public
What i find interesting about this article is not the realization that MPI is like email, but the reverse, that human collaboration using messages is like MPI. The suggestion to use SMTP as a transport for things much more complex than emails is something worth looking at. It relates to my belief that the instant messaging difference does not come from the new protocols like XMPP for jabber, but from the new client interface that facilitates short messages in a conversational style. SMTP is equally (if not more) capable of transporting these messages. Sure, SMTP is not designed for "instant" messaging. but todays use of SMTP where my local SMTP server talks directly to your SMTP server, makes email is just as instant.
Historical pragmatism and the internet
This article argues that the literature describing the internet revolution in the 1990s was characterized by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. This rhetoric suffered from three fatal flaws: (1) it was not sufficiently grounded in the historical development of technology; (2) it viewed the internet in isolation, failing to consider the wider technological context; and (3) it failed to examine the internet in view of the social, economic, religious and political circumstances of its users. Several examples from history are cited, demonstrating that changes in various systems for the production, dissemination and preservation of cultural information both border and deborder the world. The article suggests that if internet researchers take a pragmatic, historically grounded approach, they will discover that the introduction of internet technology can be seen to have similar consequences. While the technology overcomes many boundaries (of space and time, politics and economics), other social borders may be created at the same time. It is easier to see old boundaries coming down than to see new ones being erected. Rather than being swept by utopian or dystopian enthusiasms, the article insists that the really interesting discoveries are to be made in locating the subtle social shifts taking place, relatively unnoticed, as a consequence of technological change.
The Internet Is a Net Negative
I'm usually an optimist about things. That outlook has served me well in life. It's helped me build open source projects that millions of people use. It's...
The nerds are building a new internet, and I could feel it in the room
The AT Protocol is a quiet attempt to rebuild social software the way email was built — open, portable, owned by no one. A meetup in Portland this week made the stakes feel real.
Email is the new black
Many have heard the refrain, “Email is dead.” But we’re here to tell you email is here to stay. Email gets things done. When it comes to better communication, email really is the new black.
Mossberg: The tyranny of messaging and notifications
Can we endure even one more communications service?
My journey to the heart of the forgotten internet
Slowly but surely, huge swaths of the internet are vanishing. But the artefacts of the early web are still out there, and they have lessons for the future.
News: WHAT open mailing list announcement — WHATWG
How is the emerging post-platforms internet like the early days of blogging? @gruber.foo sat down with @jimray.bsky.team to go long on this question, with a few other digressions along the way. atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-09-11-make-…
Make Your Own Thing - AT Protocol
atproto.com