Although email has existed for quite a long time, it started gaining popularity as an alternative to personal letters in the mid 1990’s. The 1998 romantic comedy movie You’ve Got Mail is a good example of the excitement that was generated in people looking forward to sending and receiving personal communications.
Personal emails started as something that people could enjoy to privately communicate with friends in lieu of “snail mail” letters sent via the U.S. Post Office, and of course necessary personal private communications with businesses with whom they wanted to interact.
Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, like most new things, it was not long before there was an effort to monetize personal email communication. Businesses and other entities now typically share or sell any personal email addresses that they get their hands on. Many of the companies operating internet search engines record everything that is viewed on-line and use this information to advertise to the IP address that did the searches. In addition if they can identify the associated email address then more ads are sent as emails.
This practice has exploded since the late 1990’s. Today, even people who pay providers good money for private email accounts are not immune to the hundreds of marketing spam emails. Private email accounts have been effectively hijacked by marketing companies in order to maximize their profits regardless of the consequences. Most people are not able to keep up with this volume of emails and as such their email accounts are rendered useless for their originally intended purpose of personal communication.
I have often spent a great deal of time composing a personal letter, in the form of an email, to a close friend who later tells me that they never saw it. Often they say that they get 150 emails a day and simply can not handle that kind of volume so they are deleted in mass since they are mostly unsolicited ads. Emails are no longer thought of as personal letters that people look forward to receiving as was the case in the 1998 movie mentioned above. It seems a shame that another technological advance of our time has been rendered useless for its original purpose and enjoyment of the people due to corporate greed and their desire to monetize and maximize profit on every aspect of our modern lives.