[ih] The Decline and Fall of Internet Email?

[Dave Crocker]

On 2/13/2024 2:39 PM, John R. Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2024, Bill Woodcock wrote:
>> Micropayment bonds.  Yes, retrofitting that onto the current system 
>> of email would be very difficult. ...
>
> Gee, it seems like just yesterday that I was saying e-postage is the 
> bad idea that just won't go away. 


This is an example of an especially consistent pattern, over the history 
of the Net, when talking about how to solve security-related issues:  
good theory that ignores bad history and even worse design detail.

That is, an entirely reasonable and appealing idea which has either or 
both of far too little design detail to permit serious testing and 
deployment, or a history of failing technically or failing on usability 
or failing on market appeal, where market appeal often includes 
overcoming installed base momentum.

There were several efforts to create multi-media email.  All were done 
by thoughtful people.  Some, like X.400, even had massive governmental 
and industrial support.  All failed.  At least one quite spectacularly.

We finally got multi-media by creating an overlay that did not touch the 
infrastructure and only required support in the author's MUA and the 
recipients' MUAs.

The common refrain, to a long history of very poor uptake of a security 
mechanism, is a version of "We just have to try harder". I suggest that 
instead, a long history of missing a reasonable adoption goal should 
prompt rethinking the approach.

d/


-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social