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Email will last forever

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Re: Email will last forever

#41

Post by usethis »

Sure, email is not perfect, but it is the most flexible communication method the internet has to offer. It is not tight to a single organization, or "owned" by a single company and reasonably portable with an open protocol. Tools will be invented to further optimize the experience, but in essence it will remain the same, just like a telephone call hasn't changed. I will not commit an essential part of my business again, to a single company's closed-sourced product (like for instance MS Office in the past, though OSX being the exception).

I recently started using Mailbox as my personal Email Client again, and I am very impressed in how they "optimized" the experience. It basically converts your emails into task items, with different priorities, in lists etc. When combined with notes, it could make any task / note app obsolete.

Unfortunately it only works with GMail and iCloud, but I hope Dropbox keeps investing in the product.

Re: Email will last forever

#42

Post by daigoba66 »

dinglefuk wrote: post #37
hrvbr wrote: post #32

The concept of email is too fuzzy. Is it SMTP that will last forever? This technology is more like sending postcards that every middleman can read. Certainly a more private alternative will replace it someday, and it should be more spam-proof. Also email serves many purposes. If it is to be replaced, it will be on a use-case by use-case manner. RSS is a better alternative to one-to-many mailing lists. Forums are a be…

SMTP and POP have encrypted analogous. Web server+Forum+Web browsers is hardly a better alternative to email many-many mailing lists.

While SMTP and POP protocols can be transmitted over TLS between hosts, which prevents reading messages along the wire, the email data itself is _not_ encrypted. A compromised SMTP server can easily read and copy any message received or transmitted.

Re: Email will last forever

#43

Post by soneca »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #38

I find it interesting to contrast 'forever' with another technology that will last forever 'vinyl records'. I expect there will always be point to point, store and forward communication channels, but those channels have existed for millenia, from travelers who stacked rocks to tell those who came after where the trail was, to people who send compromising photos of themselves across cellular networks. So if we set asi…

About #1, I don't have the data, but I would bet that there are more people with a SMS address (aka phone number) than with an email address.

Re: Email will last forever

#44

Post by baumbart »

jcbrand wrote: post #35
baumbart wrote: post #23

Well for me, Email is already dead. Of course, dead software still exists, for information can not be destroyed. But, there will be more surveillance. There will be more counter-surveillance tools becoming popular. But Email will not stay on that list. Over the long run, the electronic mail will fall back behind inherently encrypted solutions. At least I hope that.

What do you use instead of email?

https://bitmessage.org/

Re: Email will last forever

#45

Post by alan_cx »

soneca wrote: post #43
ChuckMcM wrote: post #38

I find it interesting to contrast 'forever' with another technology that will last forever 'vinyl records'. I expect there will always be point to point, store and forward communication channels, but those channels have existed for millenia, from travelers who stacked rocks to tell those who came after where the trail was, to people who send compromising photos of themselves across cellular networks. So if we set asi…

About #1, I don't have the data, but I would bet that there are more people with a SMS address (aka phone number) than with an email address.

Not disagreeing, but a number of people have many email addresses. No idea how that stacks up with people with SMS though.

Re: Email will last forever

#46

Post by gabriel34 »

scoofy wrote: post #22

Depends on what you mean by "forever." If you mean, say, 30-50 years, even maybe 1000, sure, i'll give you that, but i'm still skeptical, but to suggest that there won't be a better communication tool that comes along to replace the written word from one node to one other, i'd say you're deluded. There is lots of room for improvement.

Agreed. It might seem pedantic to call this article on its use of "forever", but it is not. By setting this in stone you are actually discouraging innovation. Not everyone who promises ground breaking enhancement over email is right, but someone might come up with something.

And if the article's author really meant forever, I can envision a future of effortless communication through PC facilitated "telepathy" or any other sci-fi concept that obviates email. "Eternity, my friend, is a long f[*]ing time"

Re: Email will last forever

#47

Post by soneca »

alan_cx wrote: post #45
soneca wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About #1, I don't have the data, but I would bet that there are more people with a SMS address (aka phone number) than with an email address.

Not disagreeing, but a number of people have many email addresses. No idea how that stacks up with people with SMS though.

if anything, that just make SMS a more reliable way to reach someone.

Re: Email will last forever

#48

Post by [deleted] »

alan_cx wrote: post #45
soneca wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About #1, I don't have the data, but I would bet that there are more people with a SMS address (aka phone number) than with an email address.

Not disagreeing, but a number of people have many email addresses. No idea how that stacks up with people with SMS though.

[deleted]

Re: Email will last forever

#49

Post by byerley »

daigoba66 wrote: post #42
dinglefuk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMTP and POP have encrypted analogous. Web server+Forum+Web browsers is hardly a better alternative to email many-many mailing lists.

While SMTP and POP protocols can be transmitted over TLS between hosts, which prevents reading messages along the wire, the email data itself is _not_ encrypted. A compromised SMTP server can easily read and copy any message received or transmitted.

And, even if you use a side-channel to distribute keys between the sender and receiver (to encrypt the data safely), the header absolutely has to be plain-text. Governments and companies scraping email meta-data is already a huge problem.

A protocol closer to Tor would make for much more secure email distribution, but it would also require a complete protocol rewrite. Potential death of email from a back-end point of view at least.

Re: Email will last forever

#50

Post by schnable »

Someone1234 wrote: post #6
mrb wrote: post #2

The fact "email will last forever" is precisely why I believe it is absolutely the best protocol to build automatic services to access and share personal information. I have spoken about it here: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=76 Edit: Someone1234: you don't need to wait for companies to support my proposal. It already works today with Gmail: try my live demo on pm33at@gmail.com - it works by leveraging standard auto-res…

Does this have the classic XKCD 927 problem ( https://xkcd.com/927/ )? Also wasn't this what XML was meant to solve (a single unified standard for interop)? It could "work" but unless you got at least Microsoft (Exchange server, Hotmail) and Google (Gmail) to sign up then it won't go anywhere (which is largely the issue with all email momentum, Microsoft and Google have no interest so it cannot move forward).

Google did try to evolve email with Wave... it didn't take, for the reasons described in the article (among others, perhaps).
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