E-mail will be history?

Will E-mail be history in 5 years?

This is a relevant question raised first by John McKinley and Light Speed Venture Partners. There is an ever growing amount of Internet communications tools available for everyone, ranging from VoiP and IM to Facebook, MicroBlogging and even blogging.

All of these of course take attention and time away from E-mail, that has been the backbone of our Internet communication arsenal, but can they really substitute mail?

I actually don't believe so. At the moment, and my guess that for a while, E-mail will have an official element to it that other competing mediums will not have. The share infrastructure legacy behind E-mail will keep it as a relevant part of business communications for a long time to come. The technology is mature and well supported across devices and platforms.

What I see happening is E-mail merging into the right seem between Blogging/Microblogging & chatting. These are each clearly different mediums and the usage intensiveness varies.

Maybe I am shortsighted in this case, but I just don't believe that our everyday communication tool set will change so quickly and drastically. The new tools are not that much more powerful in the things that E-mail does well at the moment.