The world of the United States Post Office is rapidly transforming due to the spread of email messages.

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The United States Postal Service is an institution that has been a vital component of American Society since its establishment in 1782.  For over two hundred years, the USPS has provided reliable deliverance of all different types of mail, to and from all regions of the country.  Recently the United States Postal Service has been plagued by problems, mostly caused by the increased popularity of the Internet and email, as well as current issues such as anthrax scares.  These problems have led the USPS into a state of debt totaling eleven point three billion dollars.  

The United States Postal Service is considered a commonweal organization, making its purpose to offer standardized services to all members of a population.(Kreitner, 263).  Therefore, the overriding problem that the USPS faces is providing these standardized services to the population at large, but at the same time attempting to meet the population’s diverse needs ( Kreitner, 263).  The United States Postal Service is an open system, meaning that its success relies upon the surrounding environment (Kreitner, 55).  The problems faced by the USPS are in many cases unique to that institution and therefore specific approaches have been designed to attempt to deal with them.  The well being and well-established reputation of the United States Postal Service is currently being threatened by the emergence of new technologies.  Many problem- solving techniques are being used in an attempt to help the USPS compete with emerging competition and return to its position as a vital component of American society.

The Post Office Department, as it was first called, was established in 1782 as an executive department of the central government.  In its early years, Congress tried to help by giving the Post Office a monopoly in the carrying of letters and was in charge of approving the budget and overseeing operations such as setting prices and mandating services (Campbell 194).  This was not very productive “because of high postage rates, a depression, and an apparent scarcity of currency” (Adie 25).  At this stage, people tried to get around using the organized system and either delivered letters themselves or found a friend or acquaintance to assist them.  All proving that from the very beginning, the organization had its flaws and objectors.

In the next 188 years there were many more problems and reforms that occurred within the US Post Office, in order to try to keep with the times and respond to changing needs.  One of the major changes was the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, in which the Post Office was renamed the U.S. Postal Service, making it an independent federal agency (Campbell 194).  The purpose of this act was to reduce the subsidies received by the Post Office from the government.  This would allow them to handle their own managerial functions and internal disputes without always having to involve Congress.  This was not completely established though because Congress gave the power to regulate postal rates to the Postal Rate Commission.  Many had objections to the plan because they were accustomed to using political power to get changes made and now they would be working solely on the negotiating level (Adie 112).  

Currently, the Post Office is still running with the same business model that was established in 1970 and many of their procedures are out of date.  “It is supposedly a self-supporting independent agency, but it is owned by the federal government.  Although it pays no taxes, it is not subsidized.  It deals with four unions – for city carriers, rural carriers, clerks, and mail handlers – and its labor negotiations are subject to final arbitration” (Deutsch 3).

The United States Postal Service existed as one of the most efficient, cost effective forms of communication between businesses and customers, families and friends.  However, in the year 1973 development on a new form of communication would go into full force, changing the world and the Postal Service’s role in it, forever.

In 1962, Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation, which was a government agency, was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a study finding a way for the air force to maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers, after a nuclear attack(www.isoc.org). This was to be a military research network that could survive a nuclear strike.  The network also needed to be decentralized so that in the event of an attack the military could still have control of nuclear arms for a counter-attack.  Baran's finished document described several ways to accomplish this. His final proposal was a “packet switched network.” (www.isoc.org)

Baran’s ideas were expanded on and researched and in 1973 development began on a protocol later to be called TCP/IP (www.isoc.org).  The development team for the protocol was lead by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. The purpose of this new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other(www.isoc.org).

The production of these new systems was taking the world by storm and many were getting involved in the research and design of what would later be known as the Internet.  In 1976, Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe developed what is known as the Ethernet, which consisted of coaxial cable to move data extremely fast(www.isoc.org). The development of the Ethernet was a crucial component to the development of the Internet.

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The Internet Society was chartered in 1992 with the release of the World-Wide Web by CERN(www.isoc.org).  An organization called InterNIC was then created by NSF in 1993.  InterNIC’s purpose was to provide specific Internet services such as directory and database services, registration services and information services(www.isoc.org).  The graphical user interface call “Mosaic for X” was created for the WWW by Marc Andressen of NCSA and the University of Illinois(www.isoc.org).

        Since the establishment of the World Wide Web, the growth, usage and dependence on the Internet has grown at amazing rates.  For many Internet users, electronic mail, or email as ...

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