Email is a really nice interface

When it comes down to it, i mostly hate getting emails. To combat that, i’ve been aggressively deleting any accounts that I don’t actively use which has got my password manager down to about twenty accounts. This has resulted in is me almost never getting emails, and any which do arrive almost always being from real people or something i otherwise actually care about, like an artist releasing a new album.

What is it that’s good about email?

The first good thing is that it is focused on long form text. Emails have a subject line, and there would be no need for that if the following content was itself only a line long. So emails encourage the writer to write more, and then i get to read more. Being text-focused also has the advantage of working well in the most mediums—screens, printers, and audio all have excellent text support.

The second good thing is that how you access email is flexible. Because it is a bunch of Standards and Protocols, there are lots of clients available, and each one has a unique way of behaving, so you can find something perfectly suited to you.

The third good is that it is slow. I can read an email and take my time in deciding what to do with it, whether that is to delete it, or to archive it, or to reply to it. Because of the long form focus of email, sometimes i don’t have the time to act on something immediately. Then i can simply not read it for a few days and it’ll still make sense and have context when i come back to it.

The fourth good thing is that it is fast. I believe that there is still a place for writing letters by hand, but one of the great things about the internet is that anyone can communicate with anyone else from anywhere else. I’ve learnt a lot from talking with people from all over the world.

These four concepts together make for a communication medium that stands out from pretty much every other offering today. Email is exciting, and now that i don’t get many emails i like it even more. It’s feasible for me to take the time to actually read all my mail in the morning now, and i started thinking that there is no reason for this interface to only list emails i have received. It also is a good interface to access any longer form text based content. Anything that is okay with being slow.

The first thing that comes to mind is rss. Lots of mail readers already have rss support built in, and rss readers often look a lot like mail readers anyway. Rss feeds can provide an email address, and having them within an email client would remove any friction to sending a reply to someone’s blog post, which is a positive interaction.

Beyond rss, having a weather email (in the style of wttr.in for example) would be useful. Calendar reminders for birthdays and other events may also be suitable.

I’m going to try and get rss feeds to end up in my inbox, and see how i like it. It could be that the added noise ruins the charm. Or it could be that having one place to read little thoughts from individuals brings me more joy.