I am considering a Kickstarter:
A system that you can run on any device, over any network, with a globally unique namespace, that supports the ability to run how you wish, where you wish, and share with anyone you desire, anywhere on any platform they have without needing to know how their systems are configured. This system is also highly-extensible, scaleable, resilient, and low-latency all while supporting numerous media types, advanced encryption technology, and privacy standards. Lastly, it’s available in every language world-wide and has been throughly tested for years.
Interested? If so, give it a try here:
Well? How did it work? I’ve got a great name for it too, Simple Mail Transport Protocol. I prefer SMTP, but systems engineer doesn’t appreciate a good four-letter acronym. Marketing might prefer something more catchy, like email. That’s right, the very reason the internet was created in the first place. Oh but you say <Insert_Email_Complaint_Here>… Well, I asked CoPilot for the top 3 complaints: which is certainly not exhaustive, but would you really stick with me that long on this topic anyway?
Congestion
So a full inbox. This exists with all digital communication methods, except the phone, and only there if you turn off call-waiting. A proliferation of applications, with various logins, refresh cycles, differing notification parameters, security practices, and privacy concerns are hardly solutions to messages sitting in an Inbox. Now, if what you’re saying is you don’t like your email client then, look at another of the 100’s or 1000’s of ones out there as guessed by CoPilot:
Lack of Real-time support
In reality, that little cartoon at the top of this post describes all digital messaging applications in the world, except for a class called PTP (Peer to Peer). These apps, Firechat was one of them, allowed protestors in China to bypass the great firewall in the 2014 Hong Kong protests and have thus been banned. Apple and the former Twit Jack Dorsey (Bitchat) both have new apps in this space which keeps PTP quite interesting. These apps do not rely on centralized servers (the cloud) but rely on radio protocols and proximity but I digress.
Stick with me, only one more complaint to address but it’s a big one, so this will be a broad stroke.
Lack of Clarity and Etiquette
That one is difficult to type with a straight face, no really. I think there are people staring at me as I type this. If you have a communication system that provides open access, is low-latency, widely available, and which the end-users are not closely related (restating widely available a different way here) that is also relatively low cost that doesn’t have issues with clarity and etiquette please make sure to let us know in the comments. The truth is communication is difficult and perfect clarity a limit one can approach but never quite reach. Etiquette, like good table manners and not threatening to assault someone for not realizing that Jimi Hendrix as the greatest rock guitarist ever - requires personal responsibility, education, and practice.
Conclusion
All those fancy apps don’t solve the top problems (as suggested by CoPilot) with email. Except for the PTP apps, they’re all near-real-time, suffer from organizational issues, and are only as clear and nice as the people who use them. Further, the proliferation of all these apps with their unique protocols, continuously evolving licensing agreements, and walled gardens are creating a giant disturbance in the force. So, what do you think? Ready to invest again in a proven technology with global scale, user configurability, and platform independence?