Every now and then someone proclaims that email has outlived its usefulness (some, groaning under their Inboxes, might say outstayed its welcome), and is on the way out. How about it?

It might seem that these pronouncements of doom for the world’s most widely used messaging channel have some basis. After all, the young generation – Generation Y – really prefer to conduct much of their communication via Facebook; it is said that some universities don’t bother to assign email accounts to their students because they don’t need them anymore. And even in the enterprise, we have that startling declaration by Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos Origin, that he will have his company email-free by 2014…

On the other hand, what M. Breton is talking about is replacing internal email with social media and collaboration platforms; he never said anything about external mail. And while students may prefer Facebook (with good reason – it is so much more fun!), they will still use email when they hit the workplace if that’s what their coworkers, bosses and customers use to do business.

In my view the best way to look at this question is to consider facsimile machines. Fax technology has been in use, almost unchanged, for half a century. It is truly antiquated: faxes are limited to Black and White, have very poor resolution, are riddled by a variety of machine malfunctions, and are excruciatingly slow. You’d think they would be seen by now only in technology museums, alongside typewriters and adding machines. And yet fax machines continue to be sold, and the capability is integrated in multifunction printers that include scanners superior to it in every way. Faxing is nowhere near going away, because it combines the power of habit – that is, a huge installed base – with extreme simplicity: sticking a sheet of paper in a slot and dialing a phone number is something even your grandmother can do; scanning and attaching to email (and extracting the image at the other end) is way more complex and error-prone. People prefer faxing, and faxes may remain here long after the desk telephones that had coexisted with them will be forgotten.

Email may behave the same way – it is old and problematic, but it is also universal, familiar, and easy to use. And as long as your granny uses it, no matter how progressive you are and how cool your Facebook page is, you will stay with it as well – after all, if you won’t react to her emails, she’ll go right to her desk phone to demand an explanation!…