Occasional Observations

Once upon a time, one of the coolest things about email was setting up an out-of-office reply. A good reply would be pithy, to the point, and ideally make recipients jealous that they were sending email to someone who was, say, busy climbing a mountain or lounging on a beach.

The concept kinda faltered when people started moving to always-on email. First you'd get an OoO reply, then, a few seconds later, an often cryptic and typo-laden note from a handheld: "Got yr measg, wil reply ltr". Finally, the third email carried the response.

As people get more adept at always-on they tend to stop sending these "I'm on it" messages and simply provide the answer. Ironically, with always-on, an OoO would actually be more effective these days. Way back when, no reply meant the message had not yet been read. Today, no reply within nanoseconds means an inferiority complex: am I not important anymore?

However, the spammers have killed the OoO for good. I'd rather not send back a confirmation that my email address is live and receiving mail - it just means my email address is added to yet another spamlist.

In future ahead of spells when I'll be away from my email, I'm back to contacting people to proactively let them know. And this personal touch can only be a good thing.

Labels: tech