Snail mails are generally written from the heart. If they not from court ))

Email should-not be compared to snail-mail, but to telephone-calls & faxes.

The pros and cons of e-mail vs. snail mail can be argued ’til the end of time. At the end of the day the two cannot really be compared. They really are two seperate species of mail entirely. They serve two completely different functions and as long as the postal services continue to deliver, snail mail will continue to arrive. In todays busy world we are lucky to still have options about how one wants to communicate. This something to be thankful for.

This so-called “infographic” reminded me of the example on page 118 of “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”, by Edward Tufte. Tufte says of his example “Here five colors report, almost by happenstance, only five pieces of data…This may well be the worst graphic ever to find its way into print.”

But standards of print are higher than those on the Internet. On this web page we see a large, colorful graphic that reports only *four* data.

Since each of these data could easily be represented as a 32-bit number, and the original graphic was 80,265 bytes, I compute that just over 99.96% of this graphic is chartjunk.

While accurate, these figures are a bit misleading since very little email spam gets delivered nowadays, whereas all the junk snail mail makes it to folks’ mailboxes. But the overall point is still clear: Email is supplanting snail mail.

I cant believe this is just the US!! Divided by the population, thats about 130 messages of spam per day for every single american. Sure take out babies and the elderly, but then add up all the email accounts for everyone in between and I am sure that number is about right. I have 3 web accounts (yahoo, hotmail, gmail) a work account and another professional account. I would say I EASILY empty my spam folders of 100+ messages per day, not to mention all the ones that don’t get caught. But like another commenter said, most of the crap gets caught and I don’t have to look at it, whereas when I walk out to my mailbox and PO Box, I HAVE to deal with every single piece of crap that was sent to me. Whoever figures out to successfully rid the world of spam should win a nobel prize, get a free trip on virgin galactic, and be provided a lifetime supply of SPAM.

The comparison is worthless. Snail mail still has its place even if there are a million times more e-mails.

I cannot receive ATM cards or credit cards by e-mail. I can carry a printed magazine with me but I must lug hardware to carry an e-zine. I can display printed greeting cards on my counter but not e-cards. (They aren’t formatted to be printed as a folded card.) Despite the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, almost all legal situations still require ink signatures on printed documents.

Interesting graphic, although 81:1 is an unhelpful statistic since it counts spam communication. If we calculate the ratio again, this time with spam removed, the ratio is about 29:1, which is a very impressive number.

How did you do this research? I want to use it in a speech but I want to know that it is credible and legit before I quote it.

Interesting graphic with very impressive numbers!

Andre B. – Unihost Brasil

Still, that’s 90+ Billion of legit snail mail for a year is good enough nos for the postal service to continue operation in spite of having e-mail.

How can we get these to equal out a little more. Why is there so much email spam???? How annoying!