Hey, E-Mail, Get Offa My Cloud
So Wired magazine lets you subscribe dirt cheap – a dollar an issue – and Pattie and I both agree that it’s a great deal. There are many thought-provoking stories that I’m sure will provide much blog fodder in days to come. But there’s a trend in the reporting that makes me wonder if I’m hopelessly behind or the folks at Wired aren’t quite living in the world we are. There’s a lot of talk about the death of the PC and the upcoming future where all of our applications live on the network and we just access them from our web/net terminals. I’m sure I’m oversimplifying, and I apologize for that. But the paradigm example that was discussed in one article was e-mail and webmail, and the rise of Yahoo Mail and Google’s G-mail. And let me tell ya, I can not stand webmail. Several of the schools where I teach have web-based e-mail setups such that I can not use Mozilla Thunderbird to pull the messages down to my home desktop. This aggravates me to no end. I do not want to have to have several web browsers open at one time to be able to get my e-mail. I do not want to have to keep logging into a particular website to get my mail. I want to open my frackin’ e-mail program and tell it, “OK, fella, every couple of minutes, you go check all of my e-mail accounts and bring home the stuff that isn’t spam.” It ticks me off because when I can’t get to the net, or if I get absorbed in other projects, I miss e-mail from people that I would like to be able to respond to more promptly, and then I wind up feeling like an idiot. And I am not in favor of any technological advancement that makes me feel like an idiot.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.