Nathaniel Borenstein. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the GuardianIt must have seemed like a good idea at the time. In 1993, Nathaniel Borenstein sent the first MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) encoded attachment. It wasn’t the picture that he had invented MIME to deliver — that would come later much later 19 years later (according to an interview with the Guardian) — it was a photograph and a recording of Borenstein’s barbershop quartet the Telephone Cords singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

Today people waste tons of bandwidth sending, as Borenstein did, 100s of such images at a time to their networks for friends. Each message going into a silo where it is quickly forgotten and not communally shared. Comments about the images, sound or other attached media are either lost or over shared. Receivers are at once delighted and annoyed but the clumsiness of attachments and how their email reader handles those attachments.

Attachments remain the worst way to collaborate. Still, it seemed like at least a half good idea at the time. (Borenstein admits what he feels are other failings of attachments including the term “attachment” itself in the Guardian article).

Today things have changed. Attachments should be like horse shoes, repurposed for use in an entirely different game or merely posted on the doorway as an amusement.

As Borenstein himself notes: “The second of [Buddhism’s] Four Noble Truths tells us that the cause of all suffering is attachments”