Blog Post 6; EOTO Reflection - A Piece of New Technology

A Piece of New Technology 

    EOTO's give us as students to opportunity to collaborate with our classmates while also learning and researching something new on our own. For our first EOTO's we all had to research a kind of technology that has advanced communication. One form of technology that I learned about from another group was emails.

    Emails are so important to today's communication. I had never even stopped to think about how often I use and rely on emails.

    The inventors of the email were Shiva Ayyaduari and Ray Tomlinson. It is widely agreed upon that email was officially invented in 1978 in Newark, NJ by Ayyaduari. Ayyaduari was 14 at the time of the invention of the email, which I found remarkable. It is noted that Tomlinson is responsible for the creation of the '@' symbol. Ayyaduari is credited for creating email etiquette and structure with; To, From, BCC, CC, Subject, Body and Attachment. I learned that there was actually some dispute between the inventors as to who created the structure, but on August 3rd, 1982, the U.S. government gave rightful credit to Addyaduari. However, both inventors were notable computer scientists and programmers who both contributed greatly to the creation of email. 

    Email and other similar formats had actually been in use in the 1960s before it was officially invented. Places like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UMDNJ used email for business purposes. When email was formally introduced, it had a great impact on the military and education systems. It then completely branched to businesses. While this was a great advantage to workplace communication, it came with its set of issues. 

    Employees, while they did use email for work purposes, actually ended up creating personal emails to communicate with other people during work hours. This caused a great disturbance and some emails sent by employees resulted in their removal from companies. This chaos led to companies creating policies for employee emails and regulating the emails they sent and received. These policies are still in effect today to help with business confidentiality and professionalism. Obviously, some people did not like these policies, but in the end, it worked out with the introduction of personal laptops and computers where people could email freely. 

    Emails were and still are a monumental part of communication today that I feel is so easily forgotten. From school to business to annoying advertisements, emails are one of the most prominent ways we connect with people. Email is also a vital form of communication because it is much more formal than social media or texting and this is extremely important to know as a student. 

    I know that in my everyday life I use my personal and school email probably more times than I can count on my hand. Let's not forget that the technology we use today all started somewhere and that we should always learn about its development and its history. This is why these EOTO presentations are so valuable. Learning about things we may not have even thought about can help us appreciate it more.