Summary

  • The sender chose a picture and wrote a message; the recipient received the pickup site’s address and a claim number by email.
  • The host held the card, set its collection conditions and absorbed the rush when seasonal greetings became popular.

A friend is thinking of you. Excellent. First, collect the necessary paperwork.

The paperwork was a short email, and the errand took place on the Web. The Electric Postcard, which Judith Donath put online at the end of December 1994, sent its recipient a notice with a site address and a claim number. Present the number at the pickup window and the chosen picture appeared with the sender’s message. Affection had acquired a collection desk.

Donath described the arrangement in her MIT thesis. A sender selected an image, supplied some words and entered a friend’s email address. The picture and message stayed on the server. This division gave each system a clear job: email found the person; the Web displayed the card. The recipient supplied the connecting journey.

The window was part of the charm

The spare notice treated a Web address as something perfectly ordinary. Donath deliberately left it unexplained, borrowing the brisk confidence of a delivery notice. The computer could sound like a postmaster even while its customer was still learning where the counter was.

The SIGGRAPH 1995 catalogue set out the same collection procedure. A special conference branch offered pictures from the Art Gallery and technical programmes. Here was a souvenir that could send its recipient into the place the sender had just discovered. The card’s image-source links also offered routes to artists and exhibits.

It took more steps than an ordinary email. Images took time to download. Yet a picture gave the sender something to offer when a full letter felt like homework. Donath’s interpretation was wonderfully modest: people could keep in touch with very little news. A carefully chosen image could carry the social weight while the text travelled light.

Even a greeting needed shelf space

Two surviving notices reveal the host’s practical role. In the original Sociable Information Spaces paper, an illustrated notification says unclaimed cards may be discarded after three weeks. The example in the thesis says two. Each notice gives the waiting card a limited shelf life; the documents preserve different collection windows.

That small sentence changes the delivery story. The sender has finished, but the service still has something to do. It must keep the stored card available long enough for the recipient to arrive. A notice in an inbox and a picture awaiting collection are separate stages, with a server in between.

The host also met the calendar. Donath reported days above 19,000 cards during the 1995–96 Christmas season, adding that the server’s capacity limited further traffic. By late spring 1996, the cumulative count was close to 1.7 million cards. A friendly little counter had acquired a holiday rush.

The picture did the talking

The message box could contain HTML, including images, sounds and links. Donath had expected that expressive freedom to be a major attraction. Her estimate was that only about one card in fifteen to twenty used HTML in its message.

Choosing a picture was enough work for many senders. The elaborate machinery underneath supported a small, recognisable act: I saw this and thought of you. The Electric Postcard made that act easy to start, then gave the host the job of keeping it ready to collect.