The little red bubble on the upper right hand corner of the Gmail app stares ominously at me every time I am on my phone’s home screen. This is because I have 2,282 unread emails and I am ashamed at the fact that that number is so preposterously high. However, if it were not for Raymond Tomlinson, I (and what I assume are countless others) wouldn’t have the luxury of ignoring unwanted messages daily. He, the man who is considered the inventor of email, passed away on Saturday at the age of 74.
It is still weird and insane for me to think that pioneers of the technology that I use everyday are dying especially since many of the programs and inventions they came up with did not exist when I was born. Inventors and visionaries like Steve Jobs, and now Tomlinson, are gone. I take things such as email, the internet, my iPhone for granted and fail to think about the fact that so much imagination, thinking, hard work, and dedication went into these creations. It is crazy to think that I am living while history is being made and there are people working everyday creating new technologies that could change the world someday.
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