From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: E-mail addresses and HCI
Date: 31 Jul 1992 19:46:58 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: telecaster.think.com

In article <oeS6SRa00Uh7E5HmBe@andrew.cmu.edu> Jim Morris <jhm+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>*All* Email addressing is generally ridiculous. Since you generally have
>to remember someone's email address precisely, the fact that the name
>has letters in it is of dubious value.  Except for network nerds, the
>email addresses might as well be nonsense syllables.

If they were arbitrary letters, that would be true.  But the fact is that
most components in email addresses have some mnemonic value, so they are
much easier to remember than nonsense syllables.  If you knew me, for
instance, you'd have no trouble remembering my email name "barmar", since
it's a nickname I've had for 15 years (it's on my license plate, and I
usually wear a pendant that says it).  And if you didn't know my nickname,
mailing to "margolin@think.com" or "barry@think.com" would also reach me.

The part after the @ also generally has mnemonic value, once you learn a
few common conventions (e.g. .COM for commercial organizations and .EDU for
educational organizations).  I don't think it would take someone long to
become familiar enough with the naming conventions to guess that the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology would be MIT.EDU.  And even when the
name is not something you can guess this easily (for instance, your first
guesses for our domain would probably be TMC.COM and
Thinking-Machines.COM), once you learn it it's usually easy to remember.

> Presumablely, there
>have been tests of how well people read, perceive, and generally deal
>with strings of nonsense sylaables vs. strings of numbers. Maybe the
>phone companies did those tests back when HCI was just Human Factors,
>and that's why we use telephone numbers today. 

Then explain why businesses frequently try to get phone numbers that
"spell" something related to them.  I have no idea what the phone *number*
for Walt Disney World is, but I still remember that it's (407) WDISNEY.

I believe we have phone numbers rather than phone names for technical
reasons, not HF.  Phone numbers are essentially hierarchical addresses; for
most numbers, each successive block of digits narrows down the geographic
region (e.g. country codes, area codes, central offices).  They were
designed to make switching systems easy to implement.  Giving each
subscriber a phone number with useful mnemonic value was simply
impractical when the numbering system was being devised several decades
ago.

And if representing people by numbers is such a good idea, why doesn't the
post office use it?  We could get rid of addresses and just put the
recipient's Social Security Number on the envelope. :-)

>Of course, I can't explain why the phone companies, who were so smart
>about choosing numbers in the 1900's are perpetrating X.400 now.  :-)

When using the phone, you frequently have to consult a phone book or call
directory assistance to translate a name or company into what you dial.
Computer users generally expect such tedious tasks to be automated for
them.  That's all X.500 is: an automated directory service.  While the
common written form of X.500 O/R names is pretty lousy, the information in
them is basically the same as in a postal address.  The original
expeectation was that users would never see those lousy abbreviations, but
would fill in blanks in forms or GUI dialogues; unfortunately, the reality
of needing to interoperate between different mail systems, or use more
generic UI's, resulted in the stuff escaping from the internals of the MHS.
-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors,comp.software-eng