Comments on: Email in daily life http://www.the-forgotten.org/2008/02/19/email-in-daily-life/ Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:25:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Ken Walekr http://www.the-forgotten.org/2008/02/19/email-in-daily-life/#comment-4 Ken Walekr Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:28:10 +0000 http://www.the-forgotten.org/2008/02/19/email-in-daily-life/#comment-4 Mike, thanks for the thoughtful response. First, we totally agree on the technology aspect. Email should be XML and database-based. It's sad that it's not, but not really the subject of my attention at the moment. I'm more concerned about the long-term conversation logging aspect. Do you think it's worth keeping conversations from, say, 2005? Or further back? At work, keeping conversations this old has been a helpful CYA technique, but it also helps to remember conversations with people where decisions or connections were made. True, maybe something like highrisehq.com is a better place to store that info, but it's easy to "just google" those names in gmail to bring them to mind. I wonder, too, if a part of me ascribes value to this because they're my "letters" -- the way my daughter might go back through the archives and find out who I was (though that thought is a little scary, too). I've also got email on my hard drive going back to high school (which I'm tempted to load into gmail as well). I just spoke to my sister who does the same thing; she's got email going back to 2001 in her Yahoo account. To date, I've loaded my 2007 Sent and Deleted items (which I deduped and spam filtered before uploading), and I'm still only using < 5% of my storage capacity. All that to say that it seems most people seem to be comfortable keeping all this stuff around. I heard David Allen say that he's got "five years' worth of email" on his laptop "just because I can." I feel like I'm in the same boat: I can, so why not? Mike, thanks for the thoughtful response. First, we totally agree on the technology aspect. Email should be XML and database-based. It’s sad that it’s not, but not really the subject of my attention at the moment.

I’m more concerned about the long-term conversation logging aspect. Do you think it’s worth keeping conversations from, say, 2005? Or further back?

At work, keeping conversations this old has been a helpful CYA technique, but it also helps to remember conversations with people where decisions or connections were made. True, maybe something like highrisehq.com is a better place to store that info, but it’s easy to “just google” those names in gmail to bring them to mind.

I wonder, too, if a part of me ascribes value to this because they’re my “letters” — the way my daughter might go back through the archives and find out who I was (though that thought is a little scary, too). I’ve also got email on my hard drive going back to high school (which I’m tempted to load into gmail as well).

I just spoke to my sister who does the same thing; she’s got email going back to 2001 in her Yahoo account. To date, I’ve loaded my 2007 Sent and Deleted items (which I deduped and spam filtered before uploading), and I’m still only using < 5% of my storage capacity.

All that to say that it seems most people seem to be comfortable keeping all this stuff around. I heard David Allen say that he’s got “five years’ worth of email” on his laptop “just because I can.” I feel like I’m in the same boat: I can, so why not?

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