When Did Email Start Changing Our Lives?

Email (also known as electronic mail) started its humble beginnings at Arpanet way, way back in 1969. That time, two universities, the UCLA Stanford and the University of Utah, created a two-computer network. Through this network, the two schools started an experiment that ended to sharing of data. From this point, the Interface Message Processor (or IMP) was developed.

In December 1971, the Interface Message Processor allowed for the connectivity standard of a network, which eventually evolved into 32 devices. Arpanet continued growing. Ray Tomlinson, who was working as an Arpanet contractor together with Bolt Beranek and Newman, formed the standard pattern for the email address: name_of_user@computer_name.

When Arpanet was discovered for its usefulness by the armed forces, the need to increase the capacity to manage data was accelerated.

In 1975, Larry Roberts developed a system that managed emails through use of folders. He used this method to sort the emails of his boss. This inspired John Vital to develop software that will help organize email consistently. This software evolved many times until it became user-friendly. Gradually, this new-born technology started to spread. After several years, 75 percent of the traffic through Arpanet consisted of electronic mail or email.

When the need and demand for a consumer-based electronic messaging system continued to increase at a fast pace, the traffic moved beyond Arpanet to a larger traffic network called the Internet. Since then, email enhanced the efficiency of communication between users from around the world.

However, the user's ability to connect to local providers or other computers was entirely tied to the carrier of telephone charges; i.e., long distance call and international call fees.

The resulting exorbitant charges led to the development of personal computers, storage, and program applications, which allowed both offline and scheduled sending and receiving emails.

In the '90s, Internet usage became more widespread. When Internet service providers opened up local modem hubs, the whole system took a huge leap forward. This allowed the users to enjoy communicating in almost real time.

Email has really come a long way. As the predominant method of communication today, email had affected and will always affect the lives of many people. Many industries are now relying heavily on the advantageous usefulness of email. Businesses use emails on their information campaign and marketing strategies. Consumers of goods and services place orders and send inquiries to companies through email.

Email has deeply integrated its technology into the society. It has proven its efficiency. But people should still be careful. Since users moved away from Usenets and other bulletin boards to a full electronic message system, the impairment found in the concept of the SMTP protocol became obvious. Because the recipients had no way to find out whether the senders were real or fake, many found themselves scammed through email.