In his 2012 essay, PG suggested email will be replaced and the way to do it is through powerful people. Since they're all at the mercy of email too, they'd be the first to switch.<p>Now it's 2017 and I don't see powerful people leaving email.<p>I want to understand why. If you're powerful and are reading this, what's stopping you from quitting email?
I've met quite a few and heard from even more IT guys that worked for them. I can at least add a few data points I've seen.<p>First is reason nothing goes away at most big companies: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's something they understand, they're often lay people who might not want to learn something else, they might have tons of stuff built on top of it (tech or processes), tons of important information stored in old emails (it's archive medium, too), and they'll get emails from other people anyway. So, why not keep using what you've been using.<p>A few others I hear occasionally on top of that big set. One that I like is that it's asynchronous. They can put emails off easier without it seeming like they're ignoring people. Managing it is fast and easy vs some web apps for communication. The security might be perceived as better esp with security software they likely have for email & data breaches they see on other things that aren't intranets or Gmail. It's decentralized, vendor-neutral protocol which existed for ages (stability). Bosses in smaller firms even use it straight-up as free alternative to paid chat or archive tools if it's Gmail. Just to avoid paying anyone past the ISP which is also cheap or someone's Wifi haha.<p>So, there's a few I've heard that tell me email ain't going anywhere.
I'm not switching from email until my company, government, any website I use, friends, family, and everyone else in the world stops using email. Email is so core to the internet, name one major website that does not require an email, name a company that dont have email. Email lets you receive a letter and view it whenever you'd like, and without losing it, unlike messaging apps, it allows for archiving of information and quickly lets you search. I see no reason to switch from email.
Paul Graham said that email was horrible, and it shouldn't be hard to come up with something better. But he didn't actually put forward a concrete proposal.<p>So: What would be better? Given that the world currently runs on email, what would be enough better that it would be worth it to switch? I don't know. I don't think Paul Graham knew then, or knows now. And I think that the reason people haven't switched is that, so far, there isn't an alternative that's enough better. And the reason there isn't one is because, contrary to Paul Graham's expectation, creating something better is actually pretty hard.
What people don't realize is that the invisible "lock in" cost of email is all the existing infrastructure. More specifically, it represents the cost of <i>moving away from</i> that infrastructure. SMTP, POP, IMAP, all the servers and protocols, not to mention all the software integrations ( for all kinds of apps and OSes ) with email.<p>Unlike something like FB, or Google, that grew up building out their defensible data assets and infrastructure from a for-profit perspective, email infrastructure has been baked into the internet since before the web ever existed.<p>It's not the whole picture, but try replicating the functionality of email with "something better" without replicating the whole infrastructural advantage it has? Good luck.
Hell no.<p>Email is the least-intrusive way for me to be contacted by people outside my organization. Some of them I do want to hear from and will be happy to transfer to a more synchronous or intrusive communication channel. Most I don't. Email is the best medium I have for screening those contacts.<p>Then there are marketing messages and announcements from platforms I use. I like having those pushed to me in such a way that I can easily ignore all but the 3% that are actually of interest.<p>And notifications. Yes, if a server is on fire, I want SMS or slack. But if someone's added a new ticket to our issue tracker or needs a pull request reviewed? Email is very effective for going through such notifications one at a time at one's leisure and dealing with each in succession.<p>Finally, there are the occasions where I want to share a big chunk of text with a bunch of people who may or may not be using the same platforms for other communications. It might be an announcement. It might be a list of questions for a vendor. Whatever it is. Email is very effective for that.<p>Now, what do you propose we replace all of those use cases with?
I would think that websites would have to stop using email as a means of identifying humans before email is done away with. What are the alternatives for self identification on the internet today?