The First Email
The first email was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, a 30-year-old computer engineer. As Tomlinson studied “ways in which humans and computers could interact,” he wanted to find a way to send files between machines rather than just between different users on the same computer. In a room in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Tomlinson sent the first electronic mail message to himself. I imagine the moment unfolding like a movie scene—feverish and frantic, Tomlinson sitting on the edge of the precipice of a technological revolution. The air thick with the near-tangibility of a moment that could alter how humans communicate forever. Instead, the moment is remembered as uneventful and underwhelming. Tomlinson was unable to even recall the message of the first email. Tomlinson claimed it “perhaps said something along the lines of ‘QWERTYUIOP.’” The very first message of a culturally-redefining method of communication. And all we have is a “perhaps.” Maybe this shouldn’t trouble me as much as it does, but I figured Ray would have at least taken the chance to be silly or sentimental. A ceremonial “Here goes nothing!” could have sufficed. But instead, all we know is that Tim thinks he typed gibberish.
Of course, the introduction of the email wasn’t the first time communication was revolutionized by new technology. But guess what? The other guys could tell us exactly what their first messages said. When Samuel B. Morse sent the first telegram on May 24, 1844, the message read, "What hath god wrought!" There we go—that is the drama I was hoping for. Then on March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell heralded the dawn of the telephone era with a message to his assistant: "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you." You can practically see the playful smile behind what sounds like smug, amused excitement at this first summons transmitted over a wire. Personally, I choose to read that bit of transmitted speech as the first friendly practical-joke prank call. It’s almost like Bell had a feeling that his new patent would someday lead to the invention of the in-ear pieces that make the marvel of Impractical Jokers possible. Surely each of these inventors felt at least some sense of how the world might change if their message managed to send through successfully. But maybe Ray Tomlinson had already tried to send the “first” email many, many times—enough times that he got tired of typing “Here goes nothing!” and just let his hand fall on the keys, trying to not get his hopes up as he waited to see if the message would transmit to the other computer in the room. Even still, such nonchalance feels flippant in the face of the burgeoning digital information revolution. Tomlinson could have at least taken Alexander Graham Bell’s lead and scribbled something down to remember the letters of that first message.
Today, handwritten snail-mail has a romantic sense of sincerity to it. I wonder if it had that same preciousness in 1971? If so, what must it have been like to digitize such a tender and ceremonial form of communication?! Even if the event was reportedly uneventful, I can’t help romanticizing what that moment might have felt like… Did Ray feel butterflies in his stomach? When he typed something like “ASDFGHJKL” or “QWERTYUIOP” into the text bar, did his heart rate increase or his eyes widen with anticipation? Not to be snide, but… I doubt Ray remembers. What does this mean for our memories, then? If Ray Tomlinson can’t recall what the first email ever sent contained, what are all the things I can’t recall that might be important to me or to someone else one day? Dr. Yana Weinstein writes, “When I (or any cognitive psychologist) refer to “short-term memory,” we’re talking about memory that lasts for 15-30 seconds. Not minutes, not a day, not a few weeks. Just 15-30 seconds.” Well, as someone who would prefer to remember every single thought that has ever crossed my mind, that’s certainly disheartening to hear. How many beautiful things have I encountered, only to hold their memory for just 15-30 seconds? Is there a way to will my memories into long-term storage? Is writing them down the only way to keep them? Or is Ray Tomlinson’s inability to recall the first email sending me a personal memo to let go of my fear of forgetting and just live within moments as they come? To trust that what matters will stay, and surrender to forgetting as part of remembering? Fleetingness is bittersweet. After all, it is nice to know that any moment might mean something—even if it’s only remembered for a quarter of a minute. And who knows, maybe Ray Tomlinson would have been able to perfectly articulate how it felt even if he can’t remember what it said.
Although I’ve been projecting all of this excitement onto Tomlinson's sending of the first electronic mail message, the feeling that I generally associate with the sending of an email is dread. In the year 2025, emails are one of the only means of communication that have maintained an air of formality. Since no one writes emails the way they speak, crafting an “acceptable” email can feel oddly anxiety-inducing. Who, exactly, are we trying to please with these electronic correspondences? Why do we never question the precise professionalism of emails? I wonder, what are we really preserving here—with the rules and the language of the email? With their oddly formal tone, it might even be easy to forget there’s a real, live breathing human being behind each key of the typed message. The lack of humanity in the spam marketing emails that snuggle up next to the “important” messages in our inboxes certainly doesn’t help the network feel any more personable. And—on a personal note—why do I feel the need to count how many exclamation points my email includes before hitting send?! The habit leaves me constantly spending far too much time experimenting with ways to edit out “excessive” exclamation marks without losing my email’s cheery tone. As we prepare students for the world that awaits them outside of the English classroom, is the writing of an email not one of the most utilitarian (in both senses of the word) skills we can impart to them? And if so, why does it fill me with such lament to imagine myself detailing the “rules” of the professional email, modeling how to say the right things in the right way to the right person? Does everyone, at some point in their lives, face the writing of an email that feels a little bit like the end of the world?
Apparently, when Ray Tomlinson sent the first email, the weight of his revolutionary “QWERTYUIOP” didn’t register with him. He didn’t realize that the breakthrough he made was such an imperative evolutionary step in communication history. To Tomlinson, all he had done was set out to find a way to deliver messages to mailboxes on remote machines through the ARPANET (which is a forerunner of the modern internet). “Adding the missing piece was a no-brainer," according to Tomlinson. "Just a minor addition to the protocol." Well, put Ray Tomlinson on a stage, slap a sash across his chest, and call him Sandra Bullock, because that level of humility deserves a congeniality award. The Mount Rushmore of Communication History will forever have his warm smile chiseled upon its granite. (Seriously, look him up. That’s a charming smile if I’ve ever seen one.) When Tomlinson was asked what inspired his invention, his response was as lacking in histrionics as you would by now expect of him: "Mostly because it seemed like a neat idea," he wrote. "There was no directive to 'go forth and invent e-mail.'" Isn’t that so Ray of him? Classic Ray, just doing his thing. Maybe we should all start doing more things just because they seem like a neat idea. You never know—your next “neat idea” might change the world as we know it.
One thing I especially love about the story of the first email is that it was sent by Ray Tomlinson to himself. That feels so human to me. Isn’t that how most writing starts—as a conversation with ourselves? We all untangle our ideas and experiences until they’re ready to be shared with others. Our interior thoughts become sketches and our quiet musings become drafts—the raw material that we shape into the stories we tell, the stories that make us who we are. Later, Tomlinson sent an email to his colleagues to inform them of the feature and provide instructions for its use. "The first use of network mail," says Tomlinson, "announced its own existence." As every English teacher goes forth to untangle what it means to teach writing, may we, above all, teach our students to announce their own existence.
I give the first email three and a half stars.
“If one extends Bruner’s discussion, logic and reasoning become part of the story—the narrative—of how and why anything is meaningful, “true,” or “real.” Without narrative, we cannot imagine, construct ideas about our future, or put words to our hopes and dreams. We cannot recall a treasured memory and why it is important. We cannot explain how we have grown and matured over the years. Narrative is the vehicle of culture, understanding, and supporting detail. It is narrative that helps us establish and explain the nature of relationships and of change. Facts are important, yes, but it is the artful narrative about the facts that gives them meaning.”
– Dawn Kirby (2016)
Reading and Writing Relationships: Narratives as the Core of the English Classroom
John Green’s essays in The Anthropocene Reviewed are compelling studies into writing from the self, but not stopping there—his astonishments, fascinations, and adorations take him deep into research and rabbit holes. In the introduction to the book, Green explains how this blended semi-autobiographical essay-review genre came to be: he was originally accustomed to writing reviews in the detached nonfictional version of third-person omniscient narration, where he imagined himself as a disinterested observer writing from the outside; however, once his wife Sarah pointed out that “when people write reviews, they are really writing a kind of memoir,” Green’s writing shifted to reflect to the experience of a participant instead. “[W]hen I put myself into the reviews,” Green writes, “I felt like for the first time in years, I was at least trying to pay attention to what I pay attention to.” With this mixture of personal narrative and memoir with research inquiry and socio-cultural analysis, there is a litany of skills students can hone through emulating the style of John Green’s “reviews.”
In her 2016 article “Reading and Writing Relationships: Narratives as the Core of the English Classroom,” Dawn Kirby offers a method of humanization through narrative: the teacher’s embodiment of pedagogy and instruction. Kirby writes, “I share by working alongside my students, doing whatever I’ve asked them to do… I always “go first,” inpart to break the ice, in part to model what they are to do, and in part to show them that our efforts with writing are rarely perfect” (Kirby 44). In the spirit of “going first,” I want to use this space to write my own rendition of an Anthropocene review:
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