Hypothetical Death Match - E-mail vs. the Web 170
netbuzz writes "If you had no choice but to choose, which would you give up: access to e-mail or the Web? Both still exist, just not for you. Read how others are defending their decisions — and how a few just refuse to choose." From the article: "From Stewart Deck: 'The Web has become intertwined into so much that I do and so much that I want to know and learn about that without it I might as well move to a grass hut in Irkutsk. The Web brings me closer to words, thoughts and ideas far beyond my geographical boundaries. I use it for information, education, insight, entertainment, EVERYTHING. ... I certainly enjoy the convenience of e-mail but I think I could put together work-arounds that would hold up reasonably well in its absence.'"
Decisions, decisions... (Score:5, Funny)
Bob's sweating brow arched over the red buttons. Intensely aware of the large calibre handgun just behind his ear and the maniac holding it who was now forcing him to choose which button to press, he was unable to decide whether to remove email or web access from his life. His pleadings to the madman had been to no avail, it had come down to choosing. His hand strained, hovering over the fateful buttons, veins bulging under the skin as his blood pressure rose and his body temperature boiled his brain. The pain of impending loss was too great, made all the more horrible by the knowledge that it would be done by his own hand.
"Hurry up!" Snapped the crazed madman from between rotten teeth and foul breath. "I ain't got all day!" As he prodded the gun forward, digging the heavy barrel into Bob's temple, Bob quivered in fear. He knew from watching Dirty Harry movies that a handgun like that would blow his head clean off, the brain matter he was so proud of scattered over the ground like so much wet, red confetti.
Our geeky hero let out a strained whimper, a silent pleading for someone, anyone, to intervene and save him from this horrible choice. Simultaneous images of mailing lists and blogs swirled in his tortured mind. Finally, a decision took form. It took form with the certainty of the iceberg in front of the Titanic, and just like then, he came to the bitter conclusion that his fate was unavoidable.
Slowly, he turned to the madman. The fear had given way to a stony resignation and determination. He looked the madman straight in the eye and said "Shoot me, asshole."
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Personally, I'd choose the web. Email's just email, and I only get a few a day.
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If there is ever a "best of" or "funniest of" for
I am very glad I wasn't drinking anything or I'd have spat it all over my monitor.
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Seriously.
Wow.
You sir, are a genius.
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Once Bob was done with his dramatic thrashing, flailing, sweating, and panic, the IT department decided for him: no email.
One way or the other, Bob would be forced to speak to a human being.
"Better unplug the fax machine, too."
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Hey! Aren't you Microsoft bob?
Get him!
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The web (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, people can communicate by leaving post-it notes on books
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I'll tell ya, I wouldn't cry a single tear if every interaction I had from now on was with a flesh-and-blood human being with no intervening wires or carrier waves (or pipes, or dumptrucks...whatever). I agree with your 'Web as library' analogy for the most part, but I can't help thinking that e-mail is the world's biggest post-office only because every 'letter' is written as if by a 5 year old in crayon. To say nothing of cell-phones, which, taken together with e-mail and IM, have completely and utterly d
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Email just has to go (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, what are we defining email as?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow I doubt it. (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow I doubt it. But I'm pretty sure it's expressible as the sum of two primes.
And I'm positive that it's expressible as the product of twenty two or fewer primes.
--MarkusQ
P.S. And to answer the main question, I couldn't do without either. Just the thought of having all that productive time back gives me the heebie jeebies.
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Which ones, smart guy?
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Email almost died. (Score:2)
With Email we at least saw this one coming and have pretty good methods of dealing with spam. (The next spam frontiers are blogs, IM & VOIP, but that can be dealt with easily too.)
While this might sound a little FUDish. Email is already dying a slow death, communications tools like IM, blogging, voip and video conferencing are making Email feel impersonal an
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I already avoid email whenever possible. (Score:2)
At any rate, the web provides me with useful information and infinite diversion. Email provides me with... a slow, inefficient, redundant method of communication. There's
No contest! (Score:2, Funny)
The Internets and it's vast network of tubes is far superior to email. Porn is on the net, not in email.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Re: (Score:2)
Is it really superior to email??? I mean, it's certainly not a truck that you can just dump something on! My staff sent me an internet last week and I didn't get it until today!
Necessity would breed invention (Score:2)
FWIW, you obviously don't get the same spam that I do...
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For a nice little disproof of that statement, just turn your spam filter down a couple notches
Give up the Web? Never! (Score:1)
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What if it's broken down to this: do you want the ability to communicate with other human beings only, or the ability to obtain information from computer databases only?
Perhaps that's more of where the question was aiming...
Easy call (Score:1)
Juvenile what if questions (Score:1)
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What if I had asked out the girl in HS chemistry?
What if I had not drank a case a beer that one night?
What if I had learned to speak spanish?
What if eric hadn't gone to africa?
What if diebold didn't make electronic voting machines?
What if ford had planned ahead better?
I've always wondered about the first one, and lately I'm becoming a bit currious about number 6.
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Either way, I think I just said nothing. Nothing inteligably, legible, or even important enough to add to the discusion.
What would I give up? (Score:3)
If HTTP was blocked at work though, I'd be looking for another job pretty quick. Saying that, my new company recently decided that I must take lunch at 12pm rather than 1pm and that was enough for me to accept interviews at other companies.
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Quite the primadonna, isn't we?!
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I don't think so. One of the benefits of working in the tech industry, in general, is the ability to choose your own work schedule. Within reason, anyway. I tend to start my lunch hour between noon and two, depending on my workload and how I'm feeling that day. When a company starts mandating things that don't nee
Email? What's that? (Score:1)
I don't know about you, but 60% of my emails are spam. And 35% are automatic emails sent by stupid machines, telling me that I've deployed an application to some server (or informing me about a commit, or
So, my choice is obvious
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Couldn't agree more, I'm a "credit controller" (I work in accounting and get debtors to pay my company). A phonecall pretty much always yields better results. EG:
Hi there can I speak to the accounts payable please?
Hi, I'm calling from this company, and you owe us money. Can we have it please?
Sure you can have your money, I'll write a cheque up today
Thanks for that. What was your name again?
That's how a c
One has a Replacement...One Doesn't... (Score:5, Interesting)
If I want to talk to someone, I can use this fancy technology that I like to call a "phone."
The only people who I could see picking e-mail over the web are those who are either deaf or mute, or are so socially inept that they can't talk to people over the phone.
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I agree. The Web has changed the very way I live life and enhanced the experience in ways that email has not. I've had email addresses of one form or another for over two decades, since long before the Internet or email and certainly the Web became household words. There is not a whole lot I can't accomplish via phone and/or fax combined with snail mail and UPS/FedEx. (The USPS ought to have its monopoly on 1st Class Mail removed...com
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IM is nicer, and email is even better because they let me communicate when I want to (or am able to). Phones are for emergencies, email for normal communication. I telecommute, so email is a bit more important (International calls are expensive).
Online Forums like /. (Score:1)
Email is a subset of the internet (Score:1)
However, if you can't have "email" in the traditional sense, you can still find workarounds because you still have "internet".
Therefore, this post of taking one vs the other makes no sense.
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You can have either the web or email without the internet. You could send handwritten st
Should be an easy question... (Score:2)
Shopping on the web, data we enter... the accessibility that it gives us in so many different things. Without e-mail we would find another way to communicate effectively. Without the web, life as we know it would change drastically.
__________
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1. Messaging services
2. VOIP
3. Camera
4. Blogging
5.
6. etc
Don't get me wrong, e-mail is important... its one of the few mediums we have that can be both personal and impersonal, stored for short of long term, and each different thought line/send has its own subject line. However, with the web, there is the possibility of thinking up another method to accomplish this.
Er, WITHOUT E-MAIL (Score:2)
btw, just as some mention about ways that we communicate without e-mail.
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Poll Question? (Score:1)
Never start a land war in asia. (Score:2)
No brainer (Score:2)
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Thank you for communicating and expressing your thoughts on the web.
I want the real thing... (Score:2)
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When reading for entertainment, sure - books are fantastic. But for getting things done? Give me bits over atoms any day.
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Sure they do, they just have a much longer development cycle. This [npr.org] might be considered like 50s era tech.
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So what are we choosing again? (Score:2, Insightful)
So what's that we need to decide again?
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Well, email is delivered to your gmail account via SMTP. Granted, this could be replaced with something else... eg: RSS feeds which contain messages signed to your public key or something to which you could subscribe, but as it stands your gmail account would grind to a halt without SMTP.
Email is becoming less and less useful (Score:2)
I agree, IM is just much better. (Score:2)
From an organizational standpoint it's even better.
all messages from one person appear in one window (or tab in the case of some better clients), anything you get pop
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What's the point? (Score:2)
But you can't take away one or the other (especially just for me) without positing some random, strange change to the world. Why is it gone? Government intervention? Lunatic planting an email-controlled bomb in my head? Broken mouse preventing me from accessing that icon? Bizarre bug in IP routers worldwide?
I gave up asking asking pointless what-if questions as a sophomore. Try rephrasing the question and you m
useless choice (Score:2)
Okay, maybe that's a little melodramatic. This is a little like saying: "If you had to choose, would you give up buying food and only grow/raise your own or would you give up any form of transportation faster than a horse?"
There's no point in even considering the question. As a practical matter, any civilization shift w
"Hypothetical?" Pussies! (Score:2)
Geez, that's what I hate worst about geeks and the Internet. It's all abstractions from someone's parent's basement. I say we do it right this time. Let's have a real death match!
Come on, Email. Everyone calls you the killer app, let's see what you can do. You gonna stand there and let the Web knock you into the corner, or are you gonna do something about it?
And how about you, eh, Web? How 'bout you get off your bloated ass and start throwing some of that weight around? Or maybe you... can't? Wassamatte
The Blog! (Score:2)
Who needs email?
Web gives you access to your blog!
Blogging via email is called 'spamming'.
(not that I am a blogger, in fact I find the blog phenomenon extremely lame... just saying; web obviously gives more and equivalent functionality).
Pitch email! then re-invent it and reap the profit (Score:3, Insightful)
patent it..
give it away free to pro-gpl and anti-drm groups, and charge proprietary houses and DRM vendors through the nose for your fortune! : )
I want to say eMail... (Score:4, Funny)
What is the Web? (Score:2)
Web wins hands down (Score:2)
If all I had was e-mail, how would I get people's e-mail addresses? For my current friends and family, I either already have them, or I ask them. All the other e-mail addresses I have come off the Web. Without web, new contacts would be established as they were in pre-internet days. I'd have to find out about clubs, social groups, etc. by reading printed newspapers, attending their meetings, and striking up conversations with people who gave me their business cards. Very ineficient!
With just Web and
Another stupid thought experiment (Score:2)
Maybe, just maybe, those who refused to choose were simply telling the pollster to fuck off?
If I had email or the web... (Score:5, Funny)
How about Usenet? Do I get NNTP? Gopher? FTP? Telnet? UUCP?
Christ, what a STUPID question.
Come on - which would your really give up? (Score:2)
Don't hold back...
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What would be worse, SMTP over HTTP or HTTP over SMTP? Probably the latter.
Mail a GET request, get the page back in an attachment on a reply mail... It doesn't even seem like a challenge, does it?
Agree with the article (Score:2)
At its' core, what is email?
It is an application using a protocol that allows for the two-way transfer of ASCII text files. There is hardly a single transfer protocol in existence on the Internet (in fact if there is one, I don't know about it) that does not allow the same. Granted, not all of them *deliver* said text in exactly the same way, but that's because many of them were primarily designed to do other things...but when you
You could live without email. (Score:2)
Life without the web wasn't that bad (Score:2)
I suspect a lot of people here have never experienced the Internet without the web.
Let me tell you: it wasn't that bad!
Instead of forums and such, we had mailing lists and usenet. They both uses basically the same format for messages, so you could often use the same client to deal with both. They had some really nice advantages, such as almost all of the UI was done by client. You could easily change how stuff looked and worked anyway you wanted without changing the whole system and all the forums
What about Webmail? (Score:2)
I believe that e-mail and the web are so intertwined, what with HTML e-mails and HTML interfaces to e-mail inboxes (aka webmail) that to eliminate access to one would cripple access to the other?
To answer the question, I would have to say I would rather lose access to e-mail. I'd still have access to my cell phone, and, li
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Spell checkers can't catch grammar errors...
What viewpoint (Score:2)
From the viewpoint of my private life: I can get to my e-mail through the web, I can use fo
Most. (Score:2)
Ever.
I heard that Taco and crew are gonna smoke weed and sit on the couch thinking of more "what ifs" for tomorrow's stories as well. Perhaps there should be a new "what if" section for slashdot!
ditch email (Score:2)
I could still communicate without e-mail, simply give people a web form address to send me stuff :D
Easy: The Web (Score:2)
Or is that cheating?
Missing option: both? (Score:2)
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0. NO CARRIER ...
Last year I had no web (Score:2)
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Gmail. (Score:2)
I'd actually *donate* to rid the world of email (Score:2)
Ok here's another one... (Score:2)
But which one would you chose? Now, they both exist, but not for you. So what would it be? 1 or 0?
Stay tuned for more pointless polls and 11.
stupid question (Score:2)
The question ignores the fact that this strange "Internet" thing is built on multi-purpose protocols. How, exactly, do you intend to enforce Layer-7 limitations on a Layer-3 network?
If I can only have web, it'll take me gmail and a minute at most to have e-mail as well. If I can only have e-mail, surfing the web will be slow, but there are still sites out there that'll send you any website as an e-mail in response to an e-mail request and it should be trivial to auto
Alternatives (Score:2)
But email can be substituted by many other things. Message boards, instant messaging, comment threads, IRC... there are a hundred ways to communicate on the Internet, but only one way to put up content for others to view.
So I choose to lose email. I wouldn't even miss it much.
The Raven
Read only web VS E-mail (Score:2)
Only old people use email... (Score:2)
If you asked the average person under 20 if they'd give up email or the web, they'd definitely give up email since the only time they probably ever use it is to register for websites that require it, or MAYBE to talk to some of their older relatives.
If they really need to leave someone a message, they can do it on myspace, or if the person's a good friend you SMS their cellphone...
Hypothetical indeed (Score:2)
Conceivably, these sorts of questions could give rise to interesting debate. Or you could get a life.
Random ruminations... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why IM is considered cheating if you give up on email. (You can't IM someone you don't know out of the blue; most companies don't have IM addresses listed, etc.) If IM is 'cheating' then isn't the telephone cheating, too? What about IRC? Is that cheating?
As the author says it's purely academic. My problem with these 'what-ifs' is that because they are unusual, the only way to give a sensible answer is to know all the extraneous details that are left to the imagination. What are the repercussions of breaking the rule? What are the limitations? What are the rules? Is it cheating to put up messages on forum, then phone your friends and tell them to go reply? On the flip side, it's probably cheating to email people and ask "can you do a google search and tell me..." but is it cheating if you just email them the question? In this day and age, if you ask someone a question, they'll start with a web-search anyways.
If I had to decide, I'd also select the web. Email is one of many communication modes available today (and its functionality is easily emulated elsehow), but when it comes to information collection/dissemination, the web is really unique.
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What is the difference between an http: and a mailto: in the scheme of things?
A Wiki [wikipedia.org] can be used for email-like communications. What is the difference from PHPboard forum websites and google groups (besides SPAM, pr0n and security vulnerabilities?) Heck, the customer comm
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Today, you use email exclusively for some purposes. Now be imaginitive here, you don't respond to your boss' group email with an IM to your boss and 15 coworkers, and you sometimes use email because it is late in the evening etc. The no email question is "Imagine you could no longer use the internet for those purposes." Don't be creative and inventive and come up with alternatives, you just can't use the internet for it any more.
Same thing with the we
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The problem with your analysis is that those resources were available on mailing lists long, long before the Web. For example the French-Harvard "Exoworlds" list existed as email way before they had a website. More reliable, too.
Josh
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Make them beg for your member!
Horny Housewife wants it up the wazoo!
Cum for hours and hours!
I'm available tonight!
Aphid future peach wheel map
Yeah... Spam sucks... I'll stick with the Internet! Way Better pron than eMail.
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