The dead electronical letter office.
I was reminded today of how much we rely on email as a sort of de facto filing system—or, at least, how much I do.
It happened just after lunch. I had opened my current 15-minute Project: the republication of "Felafel." A couple of years ago, when I regained the rights from Pan Macmillan, I asked if they could share any production files with me. Surprisingly, they did. Unfortunately, it was just a PDF, which meant I had to convert everything into Word before I could start tinkering with it. My fifteen minutes ended before I successfully managed that. (It’s all good, though; I’ve since figured it out.)
My first thought, when I hit a wall, was to search my email for the original copy of the manuscript. I quickly realized that this book was written long before Gmail existed. I did have an email address back then, but I couldn't tell you what it was to save my life. I think I went through about half a dozen different email accounts before I finally got a Gmail invite. Since then, it's become my primary business address. If I need to find something like an old manuscript or a contract, it's in there somewhere—as long as I wrote the book after the early 2000s. So, I think Designated Targets is covered, but not Weapons of Choice.
It made me wonder how much we've all lost by not keeping track of those early email addresses.
One of the nice things about email (which, tragically is in the process of being strangled by replacement of standards by various proprietary alternatives -- looking at you gmail) is that it is generally possible to move it from one host to another, thereby theoretically keeping hold of it.
I still have emails from 1989. I thought that I had one from my Mum, from 1987, but I can't find it at the moment. So yes, it can be kept, but it takes effort.
The other nice thing about email as a filing system is that it is somewhat self-documenting: it has a Subject line, and metadata about who it was from, or to, and lots of other things that generally don't concern us, but are interesting or useful anyway.
I think this is going to cause problem (not necessarily big world problems) but with communication ie email's and photos going digital and rarely being printed, people are going to lose so much history