Sometime during the mid to late ’90s, I watched an episode of a TV show that I didn’t regularly watch. (Since I can’t even remember the name of the show, I’m guessing that’s the only episode I ever watched.) The only thing I remember about it is that one character gave another character a gift — printed copies of every email they had ever exchanged. Email was regarded as a temporary, passing trend — something that should be preserved on paper.
Now, in 2018, I delete dozens of emails on a daily basis, without a second thought (mainly newsletters, to be fair; I get very few personal emails these days). But ironically, I wish I had printed and saved my earliest emails, particularly the one I received from the CEO of Rickenbacker. In the mid ’90s, email was still was a novelty to most people, and I guess even CEOs received so little of it that personal replies were possible. But I didn’t foresee that I would go through a dozen or more email accounts in my lifetime, losing a little history each time I switched, and it never occurred to me to save or print those emails until I no longer had access to them.
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