[bzs, mostly just being bzs, but a few points seem worth replying to]
What convinced people to pay for long-distance calling or for toll
booths on highways?
Because the company owning the long-distance network refused to let it
be used without payment. Because the governments building the highways
decided to impose the toll booths.
More generally, because the owner of the infrastructure demanded the
payment before letting it be used that way.
The same mechanism is paying for email right now. (Whether the fee
structure in use - which, for most people, makes email _incrementally_
free - is appropriate is a separate issue.)
My suspicion is that the way things are going either something is
done, or the RBOCs (and equivalent, PTTs etc) will own e-mail,
everyone else having gone broke on spam etc, and we'll be paying
15c/message just like SMS.
You're forgetting the major difference that makes your analogy invalid:
with email the underlying infrastructure (the Internet) is used for
_many_ other things, whereas the highways, the long-distance networks,
did not have many other concurrent uses in place.
It is not the Internet that is in danger of imminent collapse, only
email. (I'm actually not sure even email is, but I'm letting you have
that, arguendo.)
The telcos won't "own" email unless they lock down the Internet links
and require that only traffic they can identify is carried, and demand
payment for email.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I just don't think people realize how
close we are to the whole thing collapsing like that.
I don't think "the whole thing" is in any danger of imminent collapse.
At least not unless your "whole thing" is the "anyone to anyone,
anything, anytime" email system - and in that case, it's already dead.
Anyhow, it's something to consider as one fritters away time because
every suggestion is just not quite perfect.
I think the expression is: Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Indeed. So what are _you_ doing about it? Or are you joining us in
rearranging the deck chairs while criticizing us for it?
I think the possibility of conforming resource demands (and
consequent costs) to resource usage would have a certain appeal.
It does. Unfortunately, in forms like e-postage (even going so far as
to grant its possibility) it has the even bigger (at least for me)
negative appeal of breaking most of the things that make email so
valuable to me.
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