The boss has this great idea to reduce spam, which is to start charging for e-mail.

As usual, my boss has failed to grasp the internet, and the way that techonology, works. I use Gmail and rarely ever see the spam that floods my inbox. Mozilla's Thunderbird is also great in this respect, far superior to Outlook. I've tried to explain to him that if businesses or people don't want to get spam there is a simple solution, don't put up your e-mail address on the web as an e-mail address. Its amazing how much spam my main address gets (currently the spam folder is at 444); my other e-mail, which i rarely give out and never use for posting only has 4. I've also tried to explain to him that many people (say, people in their 30's and younger) would just move to other messaging services, and that many websites do messaging internally, or that many communities have spouted because e-mail is free, and that making people pay would change an entire culture, and probably not for the better. For instance, in middle school and high school, I was part of an e-mail group called Cabin X. It was nice to go home and read ten e-mails about our lives, Star Trek Voyager, and the X-Files. I couldn't find people with the same level of interest in my hometown, it was nice to have a group I could talk to (even if I've never met them). However, if I had to pay I doubt that would have happened because I had no way of paying for things on-line back then, and I doubt that any of the others did as well. And I doubt that we would do frivolous things like try to start up the e-mail group every few months.

The fault is believing the e-mail equals lettes. E-mail has ceased to be letters for a long time, it has become something more and different.