JMC@sail.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) (08/18/89)
Electronic mail (email), using ARPANET and other networks has
been in use for almost 20 years. The widespread use of telefax is more recent.
However, unless email is freed from dependence on the networks, I predict it
will be supplanted by telefax for most uses in spite of its many advantages
over telefax. These advantages include the fact that information is
transmitted more cheaply as character streams than as images. Multiple
addressees are readily accommodated. Moreover, messages transmitted as
character streams can be readily filed, searched, edited and used by computer
programs.
The reason why telefax will supplant email unless email is separated
from special networks is that telefax works by using the existing telephone
network directly. To become a telefax user, it is only necessary to buy a
telefax machine for a price between $1,000 and $5,000 (depending on features)
and to publicize one's fax number on stationery, on business cards and in
telephone directories. Once this is done anyone in the world can communicate
with you. No complicated network addresses and no politics to determine who is
eligible to be on what network. Telefax is already much more widely used than
email, and a Japanese industry estimate is that 5 percent of homes will have
telefax by 1995 and 50 percent by 2010. This is with a $200 target price.
Email could work the same way at similar costs, but because of a
mistake by DARPA about 1970, i.e. making a special-purpose, special-politics
network the main vehicle for electronic mail, it was combined with other
network uses that require higher bandwith and packet switching.
Another mistake was UUCP. It uses the telephone network, but three
features inherited from its use within Bell Telephone Laboratories made its
widespread adoption a blunder.
1. It assumes that both parties are using the UNIX operating system
rather than using a general mail protocol. This is only moderately serious,
because some other systems have been able to pretend to be UNIX sufficiently
well to implement the protocols.
2. It requires that the message forwarding computer have login
privileges on the receiver. This has resulted in a system of relaying messages
that involves gateways, polling and complicated addresses. This results in
politics in getting connected to the gateways and causes addresses often to
fail.
3. Today forwarding is often a service provided free and therefore of
limited expandibility.
There has been a proliferation of networks and message services on a
variety of time-sharing utilities. Some of them are commercial and some of
them serve various scientific disciplines and commercial activities. The
connections between these networks require politics and often fail. When both
commercial and noncommercial networks must interact there are complications
with charging. A whole industry is founded on the technologically unsound
ideas of competitive special purpose networks and storage of mail on mail
computers. It is as though there were dozens of special purpose telephone
networks and no general network.
The solution is to go to a system that resembles fax in that the ``net
addresses'' are just telephone numbers. The simple form of the command is just
MAIL <use>@$<telephone number>,
after which the user engages in the usual dialog with the mail system.
The sending machine dials the receiving machine just as is done with
fax. When the receiving machine answers, the sender announces that it has a
message for <user>. Implementing this can involve either implementation of
protocols in a user machine or a special machine that pretends to be a user of
the receiving machine or local area network. The former involves less
hardwarebut the latter involves less modification to the operating system of
the receiving machine.
I have heard various arguments as to why integrating electronic mail
with other network services is the right idea. I could argue the point
theoretically, but it seems better to simply point out that telefax, which
originated more recently than electronic mail is already far more widespread
outside the computer science community. Indeed it is often used for
communicating with someone who is thought to have an email address when
getting the forwarding connections right seems too complicated.
The World of the Future
Eventually, there will be optical fiber to every home or office
supplied by the telephone companies. The same transmission facilities will
serve telephone, picturephone, telefax, electronic mail, telnet, file transfer,
computer utilities, access to the Library of Congress, the ``National Jukebox''
and maybe even a national video jukebox. In the meantime, different services
require different communication rates and can afford different costs to get
them. However, current telephone rates transmit substantial messages coast-to-
coast for less than the price of a stamp. Indeed the success of telefax, not
to speak of Federal Express, shows that people are willing to pay even higher
costs.
What about the next 20 years of email?
There are two kinds of problems, technical and political. Guess which
is easier.
The main technical requirement is the development of a set of point-to-
point telephone mail protocols. Any of several existing network mail protocols
could be adapted for the purpose. Presumably the same kinds of modems and
dialers that are used for fax would be appropriate but would give better
transmission speeds.
Perhaps the organizationally simplest solution would be to get one or
more of the various UNIX consortia to add a direct mail telephone protocol to
UUCP. Such a protocol would allow mail to be addressed to a user-id at a
telephone number. The computer would require a dialer and a modem with
whatever characteristics were taken as standard and it would be well to use the
same standards as have been adopted for telefax. It mustn't require pre-
arrangement between the sending and receiving computers, and therefore cannot
involve any kind of login. Non-UNIX systems would then imitate the protocol.
Fax has another advantage that needs to be matched and can be
overmatched. Since fax transmits images, fully formatted documents can be
transmitted. However, this loses the ability to edit the document. This can
be beaten by email, provided there arises a widely used standard for
representing documents that preserves editability.
The political problem is more difficult, because there are enormous
vested interests in the present lack of system. There are the rival electronic
mail companies. There are the organizers of the various non-profit networks.
There are the engineers developing protocols for the various networks. I've
talked to a few of them, and intellectual arguments have remarkably little
effect. The usual reply is, ``Don't bother me, kid, I'm busy.''
It would be good if the ACM were to set up a committee to adopt a
telephone electronic mail standard. However, I fear the vested interests would
be too strong, and the idea would die from being loaded with requirements for
features that could be too expensive to realize in the near future.
Fortunately, there is free enterprise. Therefore, the most likely way
of getting direct electronic mail is for some company to offer a piece of
hardware as an electronic mail terminal including the facilities for connecting
to the current variety of local area networks (LANs). The most likely way for
this to be accomplished is for the makers of fax machines to offer ASCII
service as well. This will obviate the growing practice of some users of fax
of printing out their messages in an OCR font, transmitting them by fax,
whereupon the receiver scans them with an OCR scanner to get them back into
computer form.
This is probably how the world will have to get rid of the
substantially useless and actually harmful mail network industry.
More generally, suppose the same need can be met either by buying a
product or subscribing to a service. If the costs are at all close, the people
who sell the product win out over those selling the service. Why this is so I
leave to psychologists, and experts in marketing, but I suppose it has to do
with the fact that selling services requires continual selling to keep the
customers, and this keeps the prices high.
I hope my pessimism about institutions is unwarranted, but I remember
a quotation from John von Neumann to some effect like expecting institutions
to behave rationally is like expecting heat to flow from a cold place to a hot
place.
I must confess that I don't understand the relation between this
proposal and the various electronic communication standards that have been
adopted like X25 and X400. I only note that the enormous effort put into these
standards has not resulted in direct telephone electronic mail or anything else
as widely usable as telefax.
I am grateful for comments from many people on a version distributed
by electronic mail to various BBOARDS.
John McCarthywnp@dcs.uucp (Wolf N. Paul) (08/19/89)
In TELECOM Digest 9/306, JMC@sail.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) writes: > However, unless email is freed from dependence on the networks, I predict it > will be supplanted by telefax for most uses in spite of its many advantages > over telefax. > ... > The reason why telefax will supplant email unless email is separated > from special networks is that telefax works by using the existing telephone > network directly. > ... No complicated network addresses and no politics to determine who is > eligible to be on what network. Telefax is already much more widely used than > email, and a Japanese industry estimate is that 5 percent of homes will have > telefax by 1995 and 50 percent by 2010. This is with a $200 target price. Frankly, I believe that E-Mail and Fax will co-exist for quite a while, because both methods of communications have unique advantages which are appropriate in different circumstances. > Another mistake was UUCP. ... > > 1. It assumes that both parties are using the UNIX operating system > rather than using a general mail protocol. This is only moderately serious, > because some other systems have been able to pretend to be UNIX sufficiently > well to implement the protocols. You don't need to pretend to be UNIX. There are uucp-compatible programs available for MS-DOS, VMS, AOS, MacIntosh, etc. > 2. It requires that the message forwarding computer have login > privileges on the receiver. This has resulted in a system of relaying > messages that involves gateways, polling and complicated addresses. This > results in politics in getting connected to the gateways and causes addresses > often to fail. Relaying messages via multiple hops and gateways is based on economics, not necessarily on questions of login access. There is such a thing as anonymous UUCP, which does not require machines to have any specially privileged access. But most sites do not wish to make long distance calls, therefore the message-passing system. > 3. Today forwarding is often a service provided free and therefore of > limited expandibility. But there are situations like UUNET here in North America, and a practically commercial UUCP network operating in Europe, both of which offer an avenue of expansion. > ... > The solution is to go to a system that resembles fax in that the ``net > addresses'' are just telephone numbers. The simple form of the command is just > > MAIL <use>@$<telephone number>, > > after which the user engages in the usual dialog with the mail system. No doubt there would be some uses for a system such as you describe, but it has major drawbacks over E-Mail as currently implemented in a variety of systems. > Eventually, there will be optical fiber to every home or office > supplied by the telephone companies. The same transmission facilities will > serve telephone, picturephone, fax, electronic mail, telnet, file transfer, > computer utilities, access to the Library of Congress, the "National Jukebox" > and maybe even a national video jukebox. In the meantime, different services > require different communication rates and can afford different costs to get > them. However, current telephone rates transmit substantial messages coast- > to-coast for less than the price of a stamp. Indeed the success of telefax, > not to speak of Federal Express, shows that people are willing to pay even > higher costs. This is the issue around which things revolve. At this point, using Internet, UUCP, or commercial E-mail simply is still cheaper than sending a message via FAX or via a system such as you propose. It is also cheaper than voice telephone, and provides a hard copy of the message to both parties. For those who use computers in the normal course of their work, it integrates flawlessly with their work environment. A system such as you propose, for security purposes (since you advocate password-free access) would almost have to use dedicated hardware, and would thus integrate less flawlessly, in addition to incurring long distance costs and giving up the advantages of batching transmissions. As for the FAX-vs-EMAIL issue: In my experience people who have access to electronic mail use FAX for a number of issues which are hard to resolve: 1. FAX provides a legally acceptable facsimile of a document in a way that E-Mail cannot. I can edit an e-mail message prior to printing it out, and claim that it arrived that way. FAX is harder to falsify. This may well be the main reason for the success of FAX, in conjunction with the almost instantaneous delivery of the copy. 2. FAX requires no retyping of the handwritten notes and other communications still very common in our office requirements. If I have a manually annotated document, I can fax it and thus transmit both the original document and the handwritten notes at the same time. 3. Because FAX can transmit an image of a hardcopy communication generated in any number of ways, it is easier to use for those who still are somewhat computer-phobic. Yes, those folks are still around, sometimes in the highest echelons of management, and they will still be with us for a while. If all you have is E-mail, you need someone to re-type messages generated by those who prefer other methods of producing hard copy. Another issue related to pricing is the postal monopoly situation in many countries outside the US. The only reason the postal services tolerate FAX is because it is substantially more expensive than a first class letter. The only reason they tolerate E-Mail is because they control the PSS networks. For political reasons, they will not allow a CHEAP direct e-mail service, for fear that it will compete with the Postal Service. > Fortunately, there is free enterprise. Therefore, the most likely way of > getting direct electronic mail is for some company to offer a piece of hard- > ware as an electronic mail terminal including the facilities for connecting > to the current variety of local area networks (LANs). The most likely way for > this to be accomplished is for the makers of fax machines to offer ASCII > service as well. This will obviate the growing practice of some users of fax > of printing out their messages in an OCR font, transmitting them by fax, > whereupon the receiver scans them with an OCR scanner to get them back into > computer form. That would be a useful thing, but your next sentence does not follow: > This is probably how the world will have to get rid of the > substantially useless and actually harmful mail network industry. Look at FAX and the type of service you propose as the Federal Express of electronic communications. Then look at commercial networks as the First Class Mail service -- short delivery times for a lot less money. And finally the various "free" or volunteer networks are similar to Fourth Class Mail. They can co-exist quite happily. The only way that current e-mail schemes are "harmful" to what you propose is in the way that the existence of the US Postal Service is harmful to FedEx, UPS, etc. -- but that is life! > More generally, suppose the same need can be met either by buying a > product or subscribing to a service. If the costs are at all close, the > people who sell the product win out over those selling the service. Why this > is so I leave to psychologists, and experts in marketing, but I suppose it > has to do with the fact that selling services requires continual selling to > keep the customers, and this keeps the prices high. That is not necessarily true. Despite the fact that Office Copiers have proliferated over the past couple of decades, Copy Shops offering the same service have also proliferated. For some people it makes sense to purchase the product and provide their own service. For others it makes more sense to purchase the service when they need it and not make the capital investment in the product. Don't try to press everyone into the same mold. > I hope my pessimism about institutions is unwarranted, but I remember > a quotation from John von Neumann to some effect like expecting institutions > to behave rationally is like expecting heat to flow from a cold place to a > hot place. That is because institutions are made up of people. > I must confess that I don't understand the relation between this > proposal and the various electronic communication standards that have been > adopted like X25 and X400. I only note that the enormous effort put into > these standards has not resulted in direct telephone electronic mail or > anything else as widely usable as telefax. These are related to interconnecting the different commercial networks, and that is definitely coming. Well, these are my comments. It seems to me that you are unnecessarily setting this up as an either-or situation, which it is not. All of these communications have their place: FAX, direct e-mail, and networked e-mail. Wolf Paul -- Wolf N. Paul * 3387 Sam Rayburn Run * Carrollton TX 75007 * (214) 306-9101 UUCP: attctc!dcs!wnp Western Union ESL: 62864642 DOMAIN: dcs!wnp@texbell.swbt.com TLX: 910-380-8748 WNP UD
bobf@uunet.uu.net (BFrankston) (08/20/89)
Though I too am frustrated by the slow adoption of electronic mail, the reason that FAX is winning at the moment is that it is simply much much easier to use. You plunk down $1k or less, plug it into the wall, and stick a piece of paper in. That is about the same as pressing play on a VCR. (I know that the VCR has all those other buttons, but I'm pleased that people have learned they can ignore them instead of having to learn them). The situation is the same for voice mail -- you just leave a message. Never mind that it is a pain for the listener; most people don't know how much better it should be in terms of message management. Electronic mail needs similar ease of use. That is why I implemented Lotus Express so that email would be part of my PC in the background always available. A second requirement is ubiquity. Creating a transport and the subsequent development of SMTP, primitive though it is, was a necessary step in this direction. It used existing equipment -- requiring new equipment in 1970 just wasn't feasible. Even now, the current phone network is barely up to the task of supporting FAX. Many machines do not have their own addresses (nee phone number). The good news is that the telcos are becoming more aware of this. X.400 provides an email transport and ISDN is a step towards a next generation phone network that treats voice as one form of data with X.400 providing a multimedia store and forward capability and X.500 automating directory assistance. The process will be instantaneous by telco standards (less than 40 years). Fax can be coopted by treating the FAX machine as an X.400 user agent and treating a FAX phone number as someone's email address. The FAX message would arrive as an X.400 body part. There is already a service that will take faxes sent to you, OCR them and deliver them as MCI mail. In summary, it is taking a lot longer than I'd like but there is an inevitability of email. Remember CB? It still exists but cellular phones are much more effective for messaging. Bob Frankston
eli@chipcom.com (08/21/89)
A few points.
1 -- There capability to integrate uucp mail and fax is already with us
a number of demonstrations have been made, such that users can send
mail to address!phone_num, and have the node at "address" convert their
email message to group 3 fax and fax it to any fax machine.
2 -- Fax does not necessarily lose the ability to edit documents. PC-fax
cards allow one to modify received faxes as well as generate them from
scratch (or printer output).
3 -- The only thing stopping me from setting up a permanent email->fax
gateway is problems running UUPC with a Hayes clone modem. Also,
with DID inbound fax, the reverse gateway could be provided for $1
per month per user. Each user would have his own DID fax number..
-- Steve Elias
-- eli@spdcc.com, eli@chipcom.com
-- voice mail: 617 239 9406
-- work phone: 617 890 6844john@apple.com (John Higdon) (08/22/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0310m09@vector.dallas.tx.us>, lotus!bobf@uunet.uu.net (BFrankston) writes: > Though I too am frustrated by the slow adoption of electronic mail, > the reason that FAX is winning at the moment is that it is simply > much much easier to use. You plunk down $1k or less, plug it into > the wall, and stick a piece of paper in. > > Electronic mail needs similar ease of use. That is why I implemented > Lotus Express so that email would be part of my PC in the background > always available. When I send email, I sit down at my computer, type "mail [user@uucp or internet address]". An editor is automatically invoked and I type the message. When satisfied that the message is correct, I exit the editor, list any "Cc's" to be sent, strike a lone "." and then a return and walk away. Within a few minutes to a few hours, my message is delivered to the recipient anywhere in the world. If, for some reason, it is undeliverable, the message is returned to my email box with an explanation. If the recipient doesn't have a uucp or internet address, a couple of extra key strokes routes the message through AT&T Mail and it is delivered via FAX or standard US Mail. You can't have it much easier or simpler than that! BTW, this *is* from my home. -- John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.uucp | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
U5434122@uunet.uu.net (08/30/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0306m01@vector.dallas.tx.us>, JMC@sail.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) writes: > Electronic mail (email), using ARPANET and other networks has > been in use for almost 20 years. The widespread use of telefax is more > recent. > However, unless email is freed from dependence on the networks, I predict it > will be supplanted by telefax for most uses in spite of its many advantages > over telefax. These advantages include the fact that information is > transmitted more cheaply as character streams than as images. Multiple > addressees are readily accommodated. Moreover, messages transmitted as > character streams can be readily filed, searched, edited and used by computer > programs. > The solution is to go to a system that resembles fax in that the ``net > addresses'' are just telephone numbers. The simple form of the command is > just > MAIL <use>@$<telephone number>, > after which the user engages in the usual dialog with the mail system. > The sending machine dials the receiving machine just as is done with > fax. When the receiving machine answers, the sender announces that it has a > message for <user>. Implementing this can involve either implementation of > protocols in a user machine or a special machine that pretends to be a user > of the receiving machine or local area network. The former involves less As you are probably aware, the amateur Bulletin Board networks already have a protocol developed which allows the transmission of mail, compressed files and message bases using the PSTN. Simple routing is handled in a "send all mail for A to system B for forwarding" fashion. Presently the address of a system has four fields, each with possible range 0-32766 which would allow many many systems. It would be fairly easy to adapt this to a telephone-area type situation. If the system were adopted by telcos or private enterprise, anyone with a PC and modem could register and receive e-mail suppose I, 61-3-899-6263 wanted to send mail to someone. I type the message, then my computer dials the email exchange in Melbourne, which forwards it to the international gateway if necessary; the message is then sent to the appropriate city and to the destination system if it is marked 'Continuous Mail', or held for pickup. Usually only mail messages are routed, but files can be routed too. Users could, at present, share their direct contact telephone numbers and avoid routing, but the companies offering this VAS might want to prevent this. Also, it would be better to integrate data compression and password protection to reduce transmission time and ensure privacy. All that is necessary is for a company to realise the potential of this system. The technology is already with us. Who needs a dedicated phone line? It could be done by users polling the e-mail exchange in the small hours, and checking for mail; it only takes 30 seconds. Businesses, wanting to be in constant touch could have dedicated lines, or use the same line as a fax machine. But it is ridiculous that at present a letter is typed on a WP, printed and then faxed, instead of the file being transmitted. How did they convince the first business to buy a fax machine, anyway??? Daniel
deej@bellcore.bellcore.com (David Lewis) (09/02/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0334m03@vector.dallas.tx.us>, munnari!ucsvc.unimelb. edu.au!U5434122@uunet.uu.net writes: > How did they convince the first business to buy a fax machine, anyway??? Fax has, since its introduction, been very popular in Japan. When you consider the Japanese alphabetS -- three alphabets, thousands of characters, itermingled in almost all writing, plus the occasional "western" characters -- fax makes a lot more sense than email... -- David G Lewis ...!bellcore!nvuxr!deej "If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower."
jhm+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jim Morris) (09/27/89)
I think John's message was very important -- a sort of wake-up call for the computer community. > Excerpts from internet.telecom: 18-Aug-89 Networks Considered Harmful.. > John McCarthy@sail.stanf (9146) > However, unless email is freed from dependence on the networks, I predict it > will be supplanted by telefax for most uses in spite of its many advantages > over telefax. I believe email will be supplanted by FAX -- period. We will eventually end up with a hybrid, but it will be achieved by the FAX business assimilating all the knowledge we have about email. > These advantages include the fact that information is > transmitted more cheaply as character streams than as images. > Group IV compression brings the image vs. ASCII ratio down to about 5. > Multiple addressees are readily accommodated. FAX store and forward services like MCI will provide this. > Moreover, messages transmitted as character streams can be readily > filed, searched, edited and used by computer programs. OCR can work for the searching part. 99% character recognition rates are common. There are already products available that scan, recognize, and index documents for you. The key idea is that the image is saved too, so there is no danger of the 1% missed characters causing problems other than missed retrieval. As for editing, very often one wants only to annotate another document. This can be done on the image. If one really wants to edit a document, OCR plus some hand massaging may suffice. > The reason why telefax will supplant email unless email is separated > from special networks is that telefax works by using the existing > telephone network directly. Yes!!! > Fax has another advantage that needs to be matched and can be > overmatched. Since fax transmits images, fully formatted documents can > be transmitted. However, this loses the ability to edit the document. > This can be beaten by email, provided there arises a widely used standard > for representing documents that preserves editability. This is a very big proviso. There is great chaos in this area right now. The standard proposed by CCITT, called Office Document Architecture (ODA), is getting very little support in the US where the DoD seems to be promoting SGML and the commercial document editor vendors are promoting their own proprietary standards. MicroSoft's Rich Text Format (RTF) seems most promising since it is used by more than one document processor. Another hope is that a single vendor, e.g. DEC with it's ODA-related DDIF and DECWrite (=Framemaker), will become the market leader and establish a de facto standard, as Lotus did for spread sheets. A much more likely development is that PostScript becomes the exchange standard. It is there. All document processors will produce it. It looks a little nicer than FAX, and there is at least a fighting chance that one can translate it back into a particular document processor's internal format. Another advantage of FAX you failed to emphasize is simply that it deals with pictures effortlessly. Even if you and I have precisely the same computing equipment and are on the ArpaNet, the fastest way for me to get a picture to you is FAX. This is true even if the picture is hand drawn -- drawing it on paper is faster than any drawing editor I've ever used. > Fortunately, there is free enterprise. Therefore, the most likely way > of getting direct electronic mail is for some company to offer a piece of > hardware as an electronic mail terminal including the facilities for > connecting to the current variety of local area networks (LANs). The most > likely way for this to be accomplished is for the makers of fax machines > to offer ASCII service as well. An AppleFAX modem will already do this for Apple PICT files. I would like to see Adobe do the same for PostScript files. > This will obviate the growing practice of some users of fax > of printing out their messages in an OCR font, transmitting them by fax, > whereupon the receiver scans them with an OCR scanner to get them back > into computer form. Why should this practice be obviated? Why not work at making OCR more effective? In a race between clever computer hackers trying to make OCR better and institutional politicians trying to straighten out the standards who do you think will win? Which would you rather be? Jim.Morris@andrew.cmu.edu 412 268-2574 FAX: 412 681-2066 [An Andrew ToolKit view (a raster image) was included here, but could not be displayed.]