National Post (National Edition)
MARSH: HOW PUSH NOTIFICATIONS CHANGED EMAIL FOREVER.
IN THE PRE-PUSH ERA YOU COULD BELIEVE IN THE JOB OFFER OR THE LOVE LETTER LYING IN WAIT, THERE RIGHT NOW WAITING FOR YOU TO ENJOY THEM, UNTIL THE SECOND YOU LOGGED ON AND WERE DISABUSED. — CALUM MARSH, ON INTERNET NOSTALGIA
Welcome to Internet Nostalgia Days, a celebration of the endless lives we have all lived online, Calum Marsh of the National Post reports
We tend to think of email as a rock amid the boiling seas of online change and progress. With time, browsers evolve, search engines mature, websites emerge or vanish. But not email. That humble mode of correspondence endures for us sempiternal! A digital epistle slung through the ether from one computer to another! A communiqué dispatched in code — fundamentally the same today as it was in 1972!
Or anyway, that’s what we tend to think.
In truth, email and the manner in which we relate to it has transformed so radically over the last 10 years that it hardly seems true to describe it as the same platform. The catalyst was a simple development: the push notification — which, by alerting us to new messages only when they arrive, relieved us of the unrelenting need to monitor our inboxes. Almost overnight, the familiar practice of sending and receiving email was altered, overhauled. We were no longer obliged to check for email. We were simply sent them — and in its own quiet way this distinction revolutionized the web.
Well do I remember the days and nights when, owing to a small business I ran in university that required me to answer emails practically the moment I received them, I would stare for hours on end at my computer, eyes twitching from the strain, index finger clicking metronomically to refresh the page. Like a projectionist gazing deadeyed at a movie screen, on the lookout for the elusive signal to change the reel, intermittently catatonic and alert, I was utterly, hopelessly in thrall.
Mine was an extreme case, to be sure. But anyone interested to know what others may have sent them doubtless felt the sensation. It seemed as though anything could be languishing unseen in your inbox at any time — a job offer, a love letter, an urgent appeal. That thought gently tugged at your attention until you had occasion to check and see.
Push notifications liberated us from the tyranny of the unchecked inbox. Today, when a ping or vibration heralds the arrival of every new missive and note, email has no undue claim on our attention, no recourse to frivolously occupy our thoughts.
A clear improvement over the old state of things, this is. Still, from time to time, I can’t help but feel vaguely nostalgic for the pre-push era. Perhaps it’s that, released from the digital enslavement, it’s easy to think back fondly on it, as I do on much else online that’s outdated. Or maybe it’s that I just miss the promise — of an unchecked inbox and all the life-changing emails it may still yield.
In the pre-push era you could believe in the job offer or the love letter lying in wait, there right now waiting for you to enjoy them, until the second you logged on and were disabused. Now, if you’re not notified there’s nothing. Push notifications revolutionized the internet. They also extinguished a harmless and encouraging dream.