Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 7:55 AM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:mfidelman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> 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.
Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra