Email, a Digital Fossil
Manifesto of an obsolete technology that endangers our security, our planet and our productivity
Sometimes, technologies don't die; they simply become dangerous. They persist, nestled at the heart of our digital lives, not through their efficiency, but through the inertial force of habits and locked ecosystems. Professional email is the perfect archetype of this phenomenon. Born in the 1960s as a simple method for leaving messages on shared computers, this protocol has established itself as the unavoidable, albeit ossified, standard of business communication. Yet, a thorough technical analysis reveals an overwhelming reality: email, in its current form, is a major risk factor, an energy sink and a hindrance to collective intelligence. It is urgent to plan its exit.
The Original Flaw: a Trust Protocol in a World of Mistrust
The first sin of email lies in its fundamental protocol, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Designed at a time when the network counted a few hundred good-faith users, SMTP relies on a principle of trust that is suicidal today. It has no native mechanism to robustly authenticate the sender's identity. It's as if the postal service delivered a package without ever verifying the sender's address, relying solely on the writing on the envelope.
The attempts at post-hoc security, such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) protocols, are complex and imperfect patches. Their deployment is uneven globally, and cybercriminals have learned to bypass them with disconcerting dexterity. The result is unambiguous: according to the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, phishing remains the #1 attack vector, involved in nearly 90% of data breaches.
Ransomware, the scourge of businesses and institutions, travels almost exclusively by email.
The email security battle is therefore a losing trench war, relying on external filtering solutions. And these solutions show their limits. Productivity giants, like Microsoft, whose Exchange Online and Outlook solutions are omnipresent, struggle to contain the threat. Their filtering systems, often cited by network administrators for their high rate of false negatives (malicious emails that get through) and false positives (legitimate messages blocked), create an illusory sense of security. They generate insane administrative burden for IT services, forced to sift through hundreds of messages blocked by mistake each day. Security should not rely on a constantly overwhelmed close guard, but on an architecture where access is secured by design. Email is, by essence, a wide-open door.
The Hidden Cost of "CC": The Disproportionate Environmental Impact of a Redundant Technology
Beyond security, email sins through structural inefficiency that has a direct environmental cost. Each email is not trivial. A study by the French Environment Agency (ADEME) calculated that an email with a 1 MB attachment can generate the equivalent of 19 grams of CO2. This figure, multiplied by the 333 billion emails exchanged daily worldwide (source: Radicati Group), becomes astronomical.
But the real ecological scandal lies in email's intrinsically redundant data model. Unlike an integrated management system (ERP) or a modern collaborative platform (like SharePoint, Slack, or Teams), email duplicates information infinitely. Sending a 10 MB file to 10 colleagues doesn't mean sharing a single source. No, this involves creating 11 identical copies of the file: one on the sender's server, and one in each recipient's inbox. That represents 110 MB of data transmitted and stored.
Compare this to a well-designed ERP: the file is uploaded once to a central server. A unique link, weighing a few bytes, is sent to collaborators. The impact difference is colossal. An internal study conducted by a major French aerospace group estimated that simply banning attachments in favor of links to a document portal could reduce the energy load related to internal communication by nearly 80%. On a planetary scale, the waste is criminal. Email is to digital what the SUV is to transportation: a system designed for another era, of glaring inefficiency.
The Tyranny of the Inbox: The Ergonomic and Cognitive Dead End
Finally, there's the human failure. The email interface has evolved very little fundamentally. It's an unstructured workspace, where priorities are blurred, where collaboration is an illusion. The inbox operates on the principle of permanent passive-aggressive injunction. Each new message, whether it's a corporate announcement, an urgent client request or an optional newsletter, arrives with the same imperious notification. The user is summoned to sort, classify, respond, in a continuous flow that atomizes work time.
Research in cognitive neuroscience is clear. A study by the University of California at Irvine demonstrated that after an interruption, such as checking an email, an employee takes on average more than 23 minutes to return to a state of deep concentration. The cost to productivity is enormous. The Basex consulting firm had estimated, a few years ago, that interruptions due to emails cost American companies nearly $1 trillion per year in lost productivity.
Modern platforms reverse this logic. They offer dedicated spaces by project or theme, where communication is contextual. We no longer suffer a deluge of requests; we go to a workspace with a specific intention. Presence statuses, the distinction between direct messages and discussion channels, and native tool integration (calendars, task management, shared documents) restore a form of cognitive sovereignty. The user regains control of their attention.
Towards Digital Communication Hygiene
The argument for transition is both technical and strategic. Email is no longer the ideal backbone of business communication; it is its weak point. It represents an unacceptable security risk, an irresponsible environmental impact and a hindrance to collective efficiency.
The solution would not lie in brutal suppression, but in a reasoned migration to an integrated digital ecosystem. Email must be relegated to the rank of formal external exchange channel, a "bridge" with the outside world. Internally, its use must be progressively eradicated in favor of platforms that prioritize security by design, energy efficiency and structured collaboration.
The question is no longer whether we can do without email, but whether we can still afford to use it as we do. To continue is to deliberately choose obsolescence, risk and waste. Digital modernity calls for turning the page on a protocol that has had its day, but which now costs far too much and no longer makes sense.
Sources :
- Data Breach Investigations Report 2024 - Verizon
- Assessment of the environmental impact of digital technology - ADEME
- The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress - University of California at Irvine
- Email Statistics Report, 2023-2027 - The Radicati Group
- Ransomware Report 2023 - Cado Security
