FUTURE MAIL, Part I
E.T. Will Find his Phone Number with X.400
by Billye Lemon

As part of "Electronic Messaging Week '85", the Electronic Mail Association sponsored a one-day seminar on "A Preview of the Next Decade". I attended as a representative of the Electronic Networking Association and as a guest of EMA. Attendance was over 200 people. Ninety percent of the attendees were from vendor companies. It was an industry gathering--an industry that appears to be highly volatile, young, and (they said) profitable. The industry is continually being challenged to meet the needs of the consumer by a technology which is
developing at a very rapid pace. Its 10-year history has been so fast-paced that projecting 5 to 10 years ahead is risky at best.

Yet, I think you will find the preview exciting. Observe an industry which, while still in the process of providing adequate definitions for itself (what actually is "electronic mail"?) is at the same time visioning in such a way as to outstrip
currently adequate definitions.

Two recurrent themes surfaced from major players in the industry: the POTENTIAL created by the establishment of the X.400 protocol, and the NEED to respond to these projected developments.

The X.400 protocol has created a *standard* for the industry. This standard has now made it possible for the development of CONNECTIVITY--the potential to connect those approximately 200 public "message transfer systems" carriers with each other and with the approximately 6,500 private electronic mail systems.
*Global* electronic communications not before possible to this extent should, in the next decade or less, become a reality.

Suppose a person with access to his corporation's private e-mail system also has access to The Source. And suppose he wants to contact a client in Saudi Arabia who has access to his own business's internal electronic messaging system and also to The Meta Network. How does this person send a message to his client? It will be possible; these links are being developed. But what about the "mechanics" of sending the message?

That "sender" will need a "directory," like a phone book, so that he has a way of learning WHO is accessible through electronic mail, and HOW to address the "letter." The directory, which the industry will need to develop, was best defined as the "frame" which would make sense out of these new capabilities.

The tremendous challenge of keeping a world-wide e-mail directory up to date, and its potential cost--these are further examples of the challenge which must be defined, refined, and developed.