Got a great comment from Jay Neely on my last post. (When will email be obsolete?) See his thoughtful  Innovation In E-mail posting. I have to admit that my feeling is mostly coming from the gut. I'm confident that future versions of email will address all the shortcomings. It will be secure, include guaranteed delivery, and will even include archiving and search with appropriate access control.

What I'm wondering is if the train has left the station. Mind you, I would love it if email continued to be the killer application. I grew up with email. I've always liked it because it is an efficient way to message. However, I can't get by that nagging feeling that we'll be moving toward a framework that will enable me to operate more productively.

Unfortunately I'm not close enough to Generation Y. Do college students consider email to be indispensable, or it mostly a way to communicate with their parents? Do people tend to send email from their cell phones? I'd think, not. I'm guessing that high schoolers and younger don't care about email all that much. Email is certainly a fundamental part of doing business today, but will that change?  I suspect so.