[ih] deterioration of email (was Re: clever usc creation)

[Brian E Carpenter]

Jack,

> Perhaps it's simply not done yet, taking longer than we should expect?

I think it's starting right now, and it's called agentic AI, which is
exactly about how zillions of networked AI agents will interact to
support user requests and business goals.

And if you think that email led to large-scale trustworthiness,
identity, and garbage problems, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Regards/Ngā mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 08-Aug-26 07:48, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> Interesting discussion, but focussing back on history....
> 
> In the 1970s, ARPA created a program called CAHCOM - Computer Assisted
> Human COMmunications - to explore how to use computers talking amongst
> themselves over some kind of network to assist humans in their own
> communications among humans.   This was one of the major elements of
> Licklider's vision of zillions of interacting computers helping people
> do everything people do.
> 
> Over the next decade or so, a lot of different mechanisms, protocols,
> and research created what seem to me to be the precursors of many
> mechanisms for human interaction used in today's Internet.
> 
> In the 1970s/80s, the vision was that each such mechanism would be
> captured in some kind of standard protocol and algorithms, and that they
> would somehow be integrated.  For example, a "conversation" might start
> out as a telephone call, migrate to an online discussion, and evolve
> into a real-time interactive videoconference.    All of those
> interactions might be saved and accessible to humans brought into the
> conversation later, as well as to History.   The Datacomputer, with its
> massive terabit (!!) of online memory, would store it all.
> 
> I'd argue that much of today's human interactions are descendants of the
> early research - USENET and NNTP preceded social media.  MBone preceded
> all of today's teleconferencing systems.  Email preceded today's walled
> gardens of messaging, as well as "texting" with SMS, RCS, et al.   IRC
> preceded today's various mechanisms for online chatting and texting.
> 
> Many of these systems and technologies are still used by some parts of
> the Internet community.  But none of them have established a standard
> for their form of CAHCOM.  Worse yet, few if any of today's copycat
> systems interoperate.   We're all forced to use multiple disjoint
> mailboxes, chat rooms, forums, teleconferences, voicemails, and devices
> to communicate with other humans.   Sometimes it seems our
> interconnected computers are making it harder to communicate rather than
> easier.
> 
> It seems to me that only TCP, or perhaps only IP and UDP, has emerged as
> a standard for communications between computers, with no standards for
> computers to assist communications among humans.  Earlier communications
> mechanisms, such as postal mail and telephony, evolved into worldwide
> services.   Even banking and finance work globally.  But not CAHCOM; at
> least not yet.
> 
> Why did that happen?
> 
> Perhaps it was just inevitable, as research results migrate into the
> real world of economics and competition?
> 
> Perhaps it's simply not done yet, taking longer than we should expect?
> 
> Perhaps the researchers simply forgot or neglected to do something (such
> as make the tech simple to deploy and use)?
> 
> Perhaps governments didn't do enough to establish laws, treaties,
> regulations, and such mechanisms to guide the evolution?
> 
> Perhaps Metcalfe's Law is wrong, and networks are actually more valuable
> when they are walled gardens of captive communities?
> 
> Perhaps...?
> 
> /Jack Haverty
> 
> 
> 
> 
>