Electronic Mail: It's Time to Get Real! (166188926)

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Electronic Mail: It's Time to Get Real!

Copyright 1991 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 1991.Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material isgranted provided that the copies are not made or distributed forcommercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its dateappear, and noticeis given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association formanaging and using information resources in higher education. Todisseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. Forfurther information, contact CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E,Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail [email protected]

ELECTRONIC MAIL: IT'S TIME TO GET REAL!by Charles R. Thomas

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Charles R. Thomas is currently a Senior Consultant with the NationalCenter for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS)specializing in strategic planning for computing and informationtechnology, and President of the Consortium for Higher EducationSoftware Services, Inc. (CHESS). He is a former Vice President of

Information Associates and served as the first Executive Director ofCAUSE from 1971 to 1986.

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As a member of the higher education computing community since Illiac Iin 1958 and a bonafide denizen of the electronic ozone since StanfordUniversity's first "Terminals for Managers" program in 1980, I havewatched all of, and participated in a good bit of, the entire evolutionof computing in colleges and universities. In over three decades, I haveseen the "human-machine interface" advance from unforgiving punchedpaper tape to friendly graphic user interfaces with pull-down menus.Even with the aid of rolling rodents, light pens, touch-sensitive

screens, and voice-response technology, however, electronic mail systemsremain in the "too-hard basket" for the average user.

How to discourage widespread use

Early naming conventions, both for individuals and for nodes in thenetwork, were enough to aggravate the average audacious academicacronymizer. Fortunately, computer account names made up of nonsensicalcombinations of letters and numbers are beginning to fade as the age ofuser friendliness ushers in the radical idea of using people's realnames, or at least some form thereof. Even some of the networks arebeginning to identify institutions by words that can be generallyrecognized at least twice in a row. As a casual perusal of any national

association's membership directory will verify, however, arcaneelectronic mail addresses and institutional node names are still verymuch in evidence. The good news is, membership lists, conferenceattendance lists, and even some institutional staff directories arebeginning to list electronic mail addresses along with telephone and FAXnumbers.

While BITNET addresses for many institutions were, and to a greatextent still are, unnecessarily complex acronyms identifying theinstitution and the computer all in one quasi-word, the new Internet



naming conventions have at least tried to decode the nodes. Already,however, I notice some very lengthy Internet names which jamabbreviations of all of the words in the formal institutional nametogether to create a very lengthy and almost unreadable alias. Ifdifficulties arise in identifying a short name for every institution, Iwould suggest that it has already been done, and on a mass-media scale.Simply watch the sports section of any local or national television newsbroadcast and you will find short names for every institutionparticipating in inter-collegiate athletics. Not many sports fans, norsportscasters for that matter, would recognize "Virginia PolytechnicInstitute and State University," but "Virginia Tech" would identify thatinstitution in a minute, and the same would be true for Cal Poly on theWest Coast.

Further, for some institutional addresses, Internet includes thespecific network node within the campus. It is easy enough to recognizethe technical problems associated with keeping track of all those campuscomputer installations and local area networks, but it would appear wehave allowed network gurus to give up too easily on the liberal conceptof a centralized institutional directory. Contemplate for a moment aninstitutional faculty/staff directory that required you to know acolleague's department before you could look up a telephone number.

Then there is the out-dated hat-in-hand procedure of applying to

the computer center for an electronic mail account. Ever-vigilantauditors point out that a signature is required to assure responsibilityfor computing resource utilization and to verify that the supplicant isaware of all of the institutional rules surrounding computer andinformation usage. I would suggest that every faculty and staff member,as well as every student, signs dozens of similar forms as a conditionof employment or enrollment at the institution, so the addition of onemore piece of paper at that time would be a minor marginal cost in timeand effort rather than a total cost at a later time. Moreover, theinstitutionalization of electronic communication on the campus would beenhanced by providing every member of the academic community with anelectronic mail account immediately upon their entry, or at leastshortly thereafter. After all, would anyone on campus consider not

having a telephone number listed in the faculty/staff/student directory?

Several institutions have come up with the novel solution of havingthe human resources department maintain electronic mail addresses, justas they maintain the files that produce the faculty/staff directory. Infact, some have taken the concept one step further: that same departmentalso maintains several tables of names for standard institutionaldistribution lists. When a new dean is appointed, the "deans"distribution list is automatically changed for everyone on the campus.Another advantage of this approach is that departing faculty/staffmembers are automatically removed from the electronic mail address listunless exception procedures are initiated. Computer installations arebecoming more security conscious, but some past hacker incidents have

resulted from the failure to cancel a former employee's computer access.

Following this philosophy into the information structure of theinstitution, the registrar could be responsible for maintaining thefiles that contain student electronic mail addresses, and the studentaffairs office could coordinate the distribution lists for differentparticipatory groups on campus. Again, this activity would occur at amarginal cost, since most of these offices are already maintainingextensive files on students and separate semi-proprietary lists ofindividuals.



E-Mail for real people

For a campus electronic mail system to be fully usable by even thetechnologically disadvantaged, whether by circumstance or by choice, Isuggest that it should follow the principle of "minimum astonishment."That principle is made up of two parts: (1) I never want to have toremember a single thing; and (2) I never want to wonder what to do next.My eyes glaze over the first time a technician says: "All you have toremember is ... ." And how many times have you had to take theungracious exit from a piece of software by turning your desktopcomputer off, then back on? Then, of course, the most unwelcome adviceis: "We offer a three-day class on that package." Everyone has threespare days to devote to learning how to send an electronic message!

From the user's perspective there are a few other criteria thatwould make the ideal electronic mail system practical for widespreadcampus use.

The desktop computer software must operate both in the IBM-compatible and in the Apple Macintosh environments which are ubiquitouson most campuses. Few academics want or need to maintain multiplekeyboards in their offices or laboratories, so UNIX workstations must besupported. Also, since some large campuses may have electronic mail

patrons that number in the thousands it would be impractical todistribute desktop software on floppy diskettes; it must reside in aserver at the top of the electronic mail network and be easilytransferable to the desktop via the network.

The basic human interface should conform to current standards forpull-down windows, but the implementation should also operate onstandard monochrome character-based displays of the original IBM PC andclones, as well as on Apple Macintoshes, some of which will be aroundfor years to come. It would also be nice if minor details like arrowkeys could be supported instead of forcing each user to go on a searchmission to discover what combination of keys moves thecursor around thescreen. Further, too many "state of the art" electronic mail systems

require high-resolution color graphics and the latest top-of-the-linedesktop computer configurations to function properly. While it is nowreasonable to assume that a majority of the campus desktop workstationsassociated with an electronic mail system will include a hard disk forsoftware storage, the software should still operate from a single floppydiskette.

Speaking of those pull-down windows, our ideal electronic mailsystem should also allow the selection of message recipients byhighlighting individual names within an appropriate window. Of course,existing technology could allow for "wild-card" selection of names fromany piece of the name, and phonetic interpretive routines might even beemployed. The same technique could be used to browse the campus

directory by department, building, or even by first name.

A separate but similar windowing technique could be used to selectexternal networks and nodes within those networks. While the currentprocedures for accessing directories from external nodes are stillprimitive, friendlier methods for that feature should be in the queuefor development within each major network.

Even though most desktop computers include word processingcapabilities, and some campuses even try to enforce the use of a single



standard package, a rudimentary text editor should be supplied (tooperate within yet another window) to prepare short messages in standardASCII text files. While most word processing packages provide for flatASCII file output, the extra steps required are hardly worth the effortfor a short message, and the line-editors common to most mainframeelectronic mail software are even less acceptable.

Finally, there are several additional desirable features for theideal electronic mail system. Almost all of these features are presentin some of the current systems, but few have them all.

While some systems do provide a "return receipt requested" feature,the time and date the recipient had access to the message (at leastwithin the local network) should be recorded in the central electronicmail server. Notice the term "had access" is used instead of "read"; theformer does not imply the latter. Further, it should be possible for thesender to retrieve any message as yet not accessed by a recipient.

It should also be possible to attach standard files of all types(text, spreadsheet, graphic, and so forth) to messages and have thempassed through the networks in a manner known in the current technicaljargon as "transparent to the user." Since the identification on thesefiles is known, they should be so identified within the system in"human-readable" as well as "machine-processable" ways rather than

requiring a separate message saying: "That file named BUDGET.WKRattached to my last message is in my WILLY spreadsheet format. I hopeyou can read it." Many current electronic mail systems do provide animpressive list of transferable file types, then the exceptions crop upat implementation time and, of course, the exception is always the file-type you would most like to transmit. Few casual electronic mail usersare prepared to create intermediate file formats for transfer, or tothen transform those intermediate file formats into the appropriatedesktop software package after receipt.

While there are many important technical issues central to electronicmail both within and between colleges and universities, those issueswill be resolved in appropriate forums. The perspective of this

viewpoint is entirely that of a human user. When electronic mail becomesas easy to use as the telephone, it will take its place as one moreconvenient communication technique alongside the venerable voice systemand the upstart FAX machine.

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Electronic Mail: It's Time to Get Real! (166188926)