V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai: Inventor of E-Mail Honored by Smithsonian

The U.S. Smithsonian Institution recently acquired the tapes, documentation, copyrights, and more than 50,000 lines of computer code that chronicle the invention of email.

Email was created by V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai in 1978 while he was a high school student in New Jersey. Ayyadurai recently spoke with the Washington Post about the state of innovation and communication in the United States. He says the big problems of today involve large-scale systems, such as the educational system and the transportation system. Ayyadurai believes that today’s students want to focus on these bigger issues instead of just learning one skill in math or science.

Ayyadurai says the United States is still the greatest country in the world in which to innovate because it has the basic infrastructure, the basic ethos, and the basic values that are needed for innovation to succeed.

Ayyadurai also believes that people are now over-communicating. "I think people are over-communicating in the sense they have missed out on what is communication," he says. "A lot of time when people are texting, it's not the content--you don't need to text--but people are doing it just to connect with another human being, so a lot of the information is almost irrelevant."

From Washington Post
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