Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
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Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
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Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#2There is a more modern alternative* to Email:
Matrix
It improves significantly in security (easy E2EE) and usability (and of course functionality) while still keeping advantages like decentralization.
How the protocol is used is up to you and the Matrix client (which atm is mostly chat, but I am sure one could give you a more email-like client).
*ignoring the ubiquitous presence of email, which is kind of the main selling point - Matrix is still in the tens of millions
Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#3I'm on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. I haven't used email outside of work for many years now, and don't miss it one bit. And even at work most communication now happens on Slack. The digital world has evolved since 1997, and email simply hasn't kept up.
I skimmed a couple articles on the blog and my biggest problem with it is that the author is making a social rather than technological argument (which are all anyways nonsensical).
"Liked a movie? Don't call or IM your friend about it, email them a long form review instead."
"Leave all your group texts and instead send your friends a weekly email summary of your life."
Do you just hate having friends in general?
Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#4I'm not one for using emails for everything. Sometimes the UI / UX just doesn't go great with things like synced up messaging and besides, email leaks metadata all over.
Having said that, for extremely casual messages where I'm not worried about metadata (talking to my parents, a relationship that is already apparent), I would not mind chatting over something like DeltaChat (which is on-and-off working on trying to do XMPP Conversations-style multiple account sign on in one single app) over the alternative of a group text or FB Messenger message. Metadata exists either way, might as well be on an email system I will retain long-term-access to it. The likes of Signal force you to either manually screenshot messages or copy/paste them message by message, there is no bulk unencrypted backup for mundane things like serendipitous conversations about dinner plans for funny family stories. But since DeltaChat is still somewhat locked in to a single account (preventing me from using say work and personal), I'm doing the no-change-choice and continuing to tolerate Signal.
Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#5I don't think this kind of Luddism is useful. It's purported by the same kinds of people that, upon seeing a new SaaS, quickly retort: "couldn't you just do that with Google Docs/Word/pen and paper?"
Not to mention that email absolutely sucks. The confusing threads, the forwarding, the constant CC'ing, someone making it or not making it into a list, the spam. It's absolute garbage. In fact, people have been seeking alternatives since the late 80s. IRC was a precursor to Instant Messaging/Slack that many techies favored. Not that async is some perfect communication strategy (it has its own baggage), but it definitely fills some of email's gaps. Personally, I think Google Wave was ~15 years ahead of its time, and we'll see something akin to it soon.
Will the author's next big revelation be "How to use a hammer for everything?"
Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#6Appreciated the gigantic RSS subscription button at the bottom of the page.
Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#7I'm on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. I haven't used email outside of work for many years now, and don't miss it one bit. And even at work most communication now happens on Slack. The digital world has evolved since 1997, and email simply hasn't kept up. I skimmed a couple articles on the blog and my biggest problem with it is that the author is making a social rather than technological argument (which are a…
I'll give you an up-vote because I think a variety of different viewpoints is important, but I'm very much in the e-mail camp. My biggest reason is simply: it's the only ubiquitous, decentralized, open protocol that I can think of. I can run my own server if I want, an I can interact with anybody with an e-mail address. Sure, there was XMPP for IM, but that doesn't have wide adoption; same with other protocols.
Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#8I love this idea - I am so totally uninterested when yet another forum/IM solution is suggested to me. email works and (most) everyone has it. The last thing I want to do is install yet another client app or sign-up to some online website app. Enough already!
Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#9Gmail alone currently handles over 50% of US email traffic, with Microsoft and a handful of other service providers taking up a good chunk of the other half. These large providers all use internal blacklists and filtering rules, which cannot be queried, and no support is available if you get blackholed.
Worst of all, Gmail especially isn't great about tagging messages as spam; a good chunk of messages sent from outside the Gmail network simply disappear. As a Gmail user, there is nothing you can do to verify that you're getting all of the legitimate mail traffic that is being sent to you.
Further, if you're trying to send any kind of business correspondence over email, you have to contend with a massive industry of scammers that are also targeting people with lookalike messages.
I love the email protocol, but from a broader service standpoint, email is terribly broken right now.
Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything
#10Gmail alone currently handles over 50% of US email traffic, with Microsoft and a handful of other service providers taking up a good chunk of the other half. These large providers all use internal blacklists and filtering rules, which cannot be queried, and no support is available if you get blackholed. Worst of all, Gmail especially isn't great about tagging messages as spam; a good chunk of messages sent from outsi…
> Worst of all, Gmail especially isn't great about tagging messages as spam
My experience is the exact opposite of yours - I find Gmail's spam detection absolutely amazing. I get essentially zero spam in my inbox, and perhaps 4-6 false positives in the spam folder a month.
>As a Gmail user, there is nothing you can do to verify that you're getting all of the legitimate mail traffic that is being sent to you.
What other communication service/protocol would allow you to do this?