by Max Frankel

About the author: Max Frankel is a columnist for the New York Times Magazine.

It doesn’t quite have the ring of John F. Kennedy’s vow, in 1961, to land a man on the moon “before this decade is out.” But you’d think a President or candidate for President would by now have hurled a similar challenge, with the promise of raising the nation’s literacy, its computer skills and its technical prowess: E-mail for All by 2010!

The Power of E-mail

As millions of Americans already know, E-mail is electronic mail that can be sent by anyone with a computer and telephone to everyone similarly equipped, anywhere on earth, almost instantaneously, at virtually no cost. It is by far the most popular feature of...