With email nearly as old as the internet, the protocol still in use today assumes that: 1) All users trust each other, and 2) All users have a moderate level of skill to send and receive email properly.  The failure of the first assumption has led to the high levels of spam and phishing emails we see today.  There is no trust: how does anyone know that a link supposedly send by a friend isn’t a botnet client?  The failure of the second assumption is just as bad: how many jobs have been lost due to a hasty “reply all” click?  The remainder of this post will focus on the second assumption: email misuse.

Mailing List Misuse

The timing of Facebook’s email announcement coincided with an incident that really demonstrates that it’s well past time for email to die.  I have subscribed to a fair number of mailing lists throughout the past 15 years or so I’ve been using email.  As per Wikipedia, electronic mailing lists fall into two categories: 1) Discussion lists, and 2) Announcement lists.  Discussion lists, such as the TinyOS programming help mailing list, allow all subscribers to send questions to everyone else in the list.  Someone poses a question in the email, puts the mailing list address in the “to” header, and once sent, all other subscribers get the email.  Anyone with an answer “replies all” to the list so that everyone can benefit from the discussion.

Announcement lists, on the other hand, are only a one-way broadcast.  Only a single owner is permitted to send announcements to all subscribers on the list with the recipients unable to reply to all.  That’s the idea, anyway.

In September, I joined an alumni mailing list which I would estimate has at least several hundred subscribers.  The list owner sent out regular updates at an interval of roughly once per two weeks, as illustrated in the figure below.  However, following the most recent announcement, chaos ensued.  On September 15th (see figure), a subscriber learned that he could “reply all” to the list and not only email the list owner, but all of the other subscribers as well.  For whatever reason, the announcement list was set up like a discussion list, allowing any subscriber to reply.  It only got worse from there.

Once one subscriber hit "Reply All", the rest is history...

Soon, a torrent of emails followed in the steps of the first subscriber as one person after another typed up a response and hit “reply all.”  Being an alumni list, the discussion circulated among a group of individuals of about the same class year, discussing subjects that made no sense to anyone else.  The responses quickly got out of hand: through the afternoon of September 15th, the sending rate soared to well past 1 email per minute.

After the initial rush of random discussion, complaints ensued.

Following a mad surge of random discussion on the 15th and another resurgence on the afternoon of the 16th, subscribers began to email the list complaining about the onslaught.  One after another, again surging past the rate of 1 email per minute, subscribers demanded that they be unsubscribed and that the discussion be taken to a message board.  Finally, the message was heard: everything died down and stopped completely by the evening of the 16th.

So what went wrong?  First, the list owner should have ensured that he was the only one able to send emails to the list.  Second, a significant number of subscribers emailed the list in an attempt to unsubscribe instead of emailing the list owner.  Both mishaps plus the breach of protocol for announcement lists made things quite a mess in only a few hours.

Some other interesting statistics can be computed in the aftermath.  Since the list’s inception, about 10% of the total volume can be attributed to announcements, 50% for misuse/discussion, and 40% for complaints about the discussion.  Next, we show the age distribution of senders:

The misuse is confined to the 45+ age group.

Since this is an alumni list, I was able to determine the age of just about every sender within two or three years, however, beyond some quick Googling, about 2% of the senders have an undetermined age.  The above figure shows that those who abused the mailing list for discussion are all older than 45.  Conversely, there is a roughly even distribution of age for those complaining.  There is also slightly lower percentage of users under 45.  From the figure, we can conclude that the younger generations are savvy enough to avoid either: 1) Misusing the announcement list as a discussion list, or 2) Sending the list an unsubscribe email instead of the owner.

Another interesting fact is that 37% of all senders used a business email address to reply to the list.  37% of senders used their business email for personal reasons!  That’s insane.  Another 9% had nasty hundred word “disclaimer” signatures at the end of their messages.  Stuff like: “THIS IS A LEGALLY PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION THAT IS INTENDED TO BE VIEWED ONLY BY THE INTENDED RECIPIENT…ANY DISSEMINATION, DISTRIBUTION, OR COPYING OF THIS TRANSMISSION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.”  I think the distribution and copying prohibition went out the window the minute they hit “reply all.”  It’s a wonder more people don’t get busted for stuff they put in emails.

In conclusion, this case study demonstrates exactly why email ought to be abandoned.  There are too many avenues for abuse, misuse, and unintended consequences.  It would be nice to see Facebook come up with something appropriate for today’s internet.

I wonder who makes these postcards… I bet there’s a hole in the wall shop somewhere just filled with these.

It’s either a big potato or a small model.

Looks like spring…

Mail arrived from the S.F. Peninsula
Again, the sender’s words were nebular
Even though it came
from The City By The Bay
The disguise’s failure was spectacular

There’s nothing like the grim reaper with an M-16 to instill joy and happiness.  Of course, I also got the monthly installment from my good friend out west:

I’m not sure exactly what this is, but it sure is evidence the sender isn’t quite on the same planet as the rest of us.  And on the back:

Yes, I’m still here.  And, you got your wish: it’s on the web.  Apparently, I’m not the only one getting these strange post cards with the 19th century portraits and ancient solar system mobiles.  To finish up:

There was someone from Planet Earth

Who belonged on another world’s turf

He sent mailings bizarre

To many friends afar

He should’ve been named Krazy at birth

Who are you?

Who is this mystery man?  There is no caption on the reverse side, so I hope it’s not someone I’m supposed to know.  My guess is that it’s nobody famous, only a picture designed to torment me into wondering just who it is.

Guilty?

I’m guilty?  What did I do?  Maybe it’s what I’m going to do…

I wonder if a certain someone in Seattle is getting any sleep at night. Since I’m doing a bit of traveling this summer, it wouldn’t be much effort to make another trip…

This is the fourth such postcard and I’ve been getting about one a month. Somebody wants attention and I should give it to him in the form of a return prank…

You would think someone handling the mail would wonder what this was about.

As I see it, the ultimate goal in the computer science community is to provide systems that improve our lives without us even being aware of it. Stuff should just happen in the background that we don’t even know about to provide drastic improvements in general areas like productivity, entertainment, and communication. All the background noise should be filtered out by these hidden systems so that we only see things that are important to us. For now, it seems, nothing is being filtered out and we are subjected to an increasing amount of information, almost all of which we really don’t care about. For example, this morning I searched Google for “mp3 players” (as in the physical devices) and only got hits for software programs. Problems like this shouldn’t happen, and I shouldn’t have to type in some weird query to specifically exclude certain results from my search. Some serious work has to be done to limit the scope of what we see to only the things that matter, and do it in such a way that isn’t annoying. Basically, operating systems and software should just work and not require any hacks to get solutions we want.

The first issue that comes to mind is with today’s operating systems. Gigabytes of patches and updates are released each month and harass the living daylights out of the end users to install them. This is one of the best examples of the Nag Factor. An operating system should not endlessly nag the user about installing updates and allowing administrative privileges. Ideally, the user shouldn’t even be aware that he or she is using a computer at all. Updates should be automatic and occur in the background without the user even knowing. Nothing is more annoying than to be deep into writing a paper or watching a movie when up comes a nag balloon demanding that some updates be installed and the machine rebooted.

Windows is far and away the worst when it comes to the nag factor. I’m almost completely off Windows at this point, with the exception that I use a partition on my laptop for my USB TV tuner, which unfortunately doesn’t have Linux drivers. It seems every time I start up the machine, about five nag balloons pop up telling me what wireless network I’ve connected to. About once a week another torrent of nag balloons pop up telling me to install software updates. When I finally install the updates, Windows forcefully reboots my machine. Nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, should ever forcefully reboot your machine. It’s a complete disruption of anything resembling the mantra of ubiquitous computing. A professor I had for a software engineering class once told me that it takes about eight minutes for someone to become completely engaged in a task. When some moron at Microsoft thinks it’s a good time to make your machine reboot, that’s about five minutes of lost productivity due to the reboot, and another eight to get back to where you were. Even Bill Gates complains about the forced reboots in Windows. Since I’ve never used Vista, I’ve heard another annoying “feature” is the User Account Control system, which ceaselessly has you type in your administrative password for stuff as simple as connecting to a wireless network.

Next up is OS X. Two years ago, I started the shift away from Windows with a Macbook. My Windows desktop began rusting from disuse almost immediately. Unfortunately, OS X suffers from the update nag almost as badly as Windows. Nearly every update is hundreds of megabytes and requires a reboot. iTunes updates even require reboots — what were they thinking? And when you install the stuff, it takes forever. Sometimes on an OS X update, my machine has rebooted two or three times over about ten minutes before the login screen comes up again. The updates first make their way to you through the extremely aggravating dock icon jumping out at you. While the dock is a good feature, the jumping icons are not. I can’t describe how irritating it is to be doing something and have a dock icon start leaping out into the center of my vision, ceaselessly pushing my buttons until I deal with it. There is probably a way to disable the icon jumping, but I’ve moved on from OS X, so it doesn’t matter at this point. UAC is also present in OS X but the designers did a decent job of only prompting you when changing administrative settings or installing software.

For the past year, I’ve almost exclusively used Ubuntu Linux for all of my computing. Finally, a group of developers has the right idea. It works almost seamlessly. An operating system should do its best to get out of the way and let the user do what he or she wants. Ubuntu is really close to doing this. The package manager is excellent — you can install anything under the sun (for free) and it updates automatically. You can’t even do this with the Mac by default, unless you install something like DarwinPorts, and even that is a real hassle to set up. The downside is that since every program you install is controlled by the package manager, there are frequent updates that require your authorization to install. Nearly every day something has a patch, but the package manager does its best to be minimally invasive. Nag balloons are infrequent, and a small icon appears in the task bar indicating that an update is available. Reboots are almost never required except for things that affect the kernel and nothing is ever forced on you. For now, I’m extremely satisfied with my Linux experience and will probably not switch back to Windows or Mac unless some serious revamping occurs.

The nag factor isn’t present in operating systems alone. The devices that are beginning to make ubiquitous computing a reality are providing irritations of their own. Whenever I miss a call, get a voicemail, or receive a text message, my cell phone beeps and hums to no end until I touch the screen acknowledging its nags. I’ve had two phones, and they both did this. Neither has the option to turn it off. I can check manually to see if anything came in while I was away from my phone and would prefer to do so instead of being constantly annoyed. I’ve also noticed that late model cars now beep at you if you start the engine and have your seatbelt off. Apparently, this is mandated by the federal government, but it’s just another irritating nag. Some cars will nag at you after the mileage counter gets beyond a certain amount since your last service.

It isn’t just the nagging that’s a problem, though. Some poor design decisions really limit the usability of computing systems and ubiquitous computing devices. The worst of this is proprietary software and hardware, with Apple really standing out as the worst culprit. The iPod that’s starting to die on me has a proprietary USB jack to plug it into my computer. What makes me mad is that it didn’t come with a wall plug to charge it — I’ve got to use the proprietary adapter to charge it via USB or for over $40 for a wall adapter. Since I don’t need to sync my iPod every day and would like to be able to travel with it without bringing my computer, a wall plug would be great. Thanks to the wall plug adapter scam, I don’t think I’ll be getting another iPod if I can help it. Apple’s computers also make use of proprietary headphone jacks and video outputs such as mini-DVI and mini-DisplayPort. I had to fork over $20 to get a mini-DVI to DVI adapter so I could use an external monitor with my Macbook. Universal hardware standards would make ubiquitous computing much more of a reality, with devices seamlessly integrating with each other and providing minimal headaches to the end user.

With respect to proprietary software, the iPod/iTunes combination also takes the cake. When I first got my iPod, I was using Windows, and installed iTunes on Windows to keep my music and iPod in order. After I got my Mac, I tried plugging the iPod into the Mac and using the Mac to keep everything synced. Did this work? Of course not. iTunes on the Mac whined that my iPod was formatted for Windows and that it couldn’t write anything to it unless it was reformatted. I don’t see why the geniuses at Apple could have written some drivers so that the iPod’s file system could be accessed from any operating system. It all seems to be about control. Downloading songs from iTunes only allows you to have those songs installed on three machines simultaneously and you can only load them onto an iPod in a proprietary format.

Cell phones are another example of this walled garden approach. You not only pay for the access to a cell network, but you have to get a proprietary operating system running on a proprietary phone to go along with it. You can’t just build your own cell phone out of spare parts, install your own operating system, and expect to connect to Verizon’s network even if you’ve paid for it. Google’s Android seems to be a step forward to breaking down this situation by permitting custom applications, but there’s a long way to go. Without all this proprietary junk to get in the way, you could see some seriously interesting applications, such as P2P file sharing on cell networks, refinement of video and text messaging, and the eventual integration of portable gaming, media, and communication into one device (the iPhone still sucks). For now, I’ve got to carry around my laptop for web browsing and programming, my cell phone for telephone calls, my iPod for music, and my PSP for gaming. Oh, and maybe a watch to tell time.

Finally, coming back to my dying iPod, battery technology needs significant improvements in order to further the goals of ubiquitous computing. Reducing I/O and computational complexity on the software side can only help but so much. The typical Ni-Cd battery, regardless of the device, lasts about two to three years and only runs for a few hours under full load. This is crap. Until batteries last for a week under full load and hold a full charge for nearly ten years, we’re just going to be throwing away perfectly good equipment. My iPod, which is perfectly fine with the exception of the battery, could last an indefinite amount of time. It seems really wasteful to toss cell phones and other mobile devices every few years just because a battery died. Reduced reliance on proprietary hardware and software could help this problem as well, for parts could be easily interchanged or upgraded if new features become available.

If the tech industry would focus on reducing the nag factor and increasing the openness of design standards, the shift to ubiquitous computing could be faster and more seamless. Until then, we’ve got to deal with the endless OS nag balloons, proprietary devices, and terrible battery life.