On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 11:06 AM, Miles Fidelman
<mfidelman(_at_)meetinghouse(_dot_)net
wrote:
Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 7:55 AM, Miles Fidelman <
mfidelman(_at_)meetinghouse(_dot_)net
<mailto:mfidelman(_at_)meetinghouse(_dot_)net>> wrote:
Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Phillip Hallam-Baker writes:
> My point is that mail is an old protocol and people who
expect that
> it can be kept going unaltered in its original form
serving all the
> purposes that it was never designed for but have emerged
over time
> are going to be upset no matter what.
True, as far as it goes. However, there is need for a push
protocol
that allows you to receive contacts from authors you don't
know yet,
in other words, a medium that is designed to be flexible enough to
accomodate new modes of communication.
It's not obvious to me that this need can be satisfied while
at the
same time denying spam. If it is indeed impossible, I don't
see why
that purpose can't continue to be served by email, while most mail
(which is correspondence among acquaintances) gets redirected into
authenticated channels.
Just a quick reminder here: Postal mail is still going strong,
after 100s of years.
Only because we haven't got email security properly sorted.
I can't remember the last time I received a real letter. All I get is
junk mail and bills. And the bills arrive because we haven't got the
standards for doing it electronically established yet.
Bills are "real" - they're transactional. So are checks. Some of us
actually do things like send proposals, signed contracts, and so forth.
And, of course, packages. And the higher the value, the more likely that
they'll be sent via physical mail. It ain't going away anytime soon.
If I had spam filtering on postal mail that was as good as I've got on
email, regular postal mail would already be gone.
That isn't to say that high value postal mail at FedEx/UPS/etc prices would
be gone, just that current first class mail and daily deliveries would be.
In the US, the USPS is already on rough ground (which isn't entirely due to
failing rates of mail, granted), so "going strong" would not be what I'd
use. Holding out for another 100 years in some form... maybe.
Brandon