The Wallflower

I hate email.

It was a thing of the nineties that stayed with that generation: the sex and the city generation. Not the people who watched the show, I watch the show. No, the people who were sex and the city. Email was the hip new thing of thier adult generation.

Unfortunatly it has not carried over very well to the younger coming-of-age generation. It's laggard, clunky and annoying.

The very idea of writing a few sentences of text on your computer screen and sending it to another was as fascinating as the idea of the telephone. That generation also made cool lattes, digital cafes (who really knows what that is anyways?), laptop computers and platform shoes. They might as well be called the email generation.

The email generation was so furiously impressed with itself for fabricating email, they went gallivanting with it in every media medium possible. (See picture: "You've Got Mail" [1998])

So what is the new medium equivalent to at least the hype of email? Is it texting? IMing? Facebooking?

Or maybe the new generation has reverted back to the good old-fashioned cell phone call? It could be an inspiring thought.

The reason that email, lattes, spandex or whatever other fads are so uber popular with certain age group is that they feel like not one person invented them but they all did. Together as a group effort. Something that they have made for future generations to have and hold. Or at least that's what they hope or think. But I guess it's not true. Because do you really hear of a lot of young people using email anymore? I sure don't.

This generation that we live in is the generation of odd convenience. I mean being able to send someone a message in a fast and seemingly simple way has always been desirable since ancient times. Humans have always been trying to make communication more possible. But this generation is one of DVRs and Tweets and Instant Movies and Webisodes.

Has mankind always been trying to think of a way to get a movie from their computer to thier television and further? Not quite.

We have created things to make things simple and then made inventions to make those simpler. It's a never-ending search for ultimate convenience and ease.

In a generation of Facebook nudges and Twitter tweets and Netflix instant movies and texting, it makes email seem like a chisel and stone.

Tell me your thoughts.

-Jack

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