Zephoria brilliantly highlights the conundrum we face from generational change, and use of technologies. 

I’m part of the generation caught between email and IM where IM feels more natural but most of the folks just a little older than me refuse to use IM so I’m stuck dealing with email. Today’s teens are stuck between IM, MySpace/Facebook, and SMS. There’s another transition going on which is why there’s no clean one place. IM replaced email for quite a few years but now things are in flux again. Still, no matter what, email is not regaining beloved ground.

Source: apophenia: what i mean when i say “email is dead” in reference to teens

Gates used to talk about email as the future due to the asyncronicity.  Well, its not that simple as it turns out.