[extropy-chat] TRENDS: Email is so yesterday

[Mike Dougherty]

On 10/4/06, nvitamore at austin.rr.com <nvitamore at austin.rr.com> wrote:
>
> Anyone have thoughts on this?
> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061002-7877.html
>

my thought is that convergence isn't happening quickly enough.  We don't
need to distinguish between IM and Email.  We need only to express an idea
towards a recipient.  If you are available via IM, we should be
communicating with a low latency of about every 5 words to a full sentence.
If you are not available, my entire stream of IM idea-a-grams should
automatically coalesce into the notion of an email which you catch up on
when you return to availability.  If I then want that message to be consumed
by a group, the thoughts should be tagged in a way that authenticates the
group members to have access to the content.  If I want no access
restrictions, then my IM/email/blog is world-readable.  I want a Wiki-style
page that I can grant R/W/RW access to nobody/one friend/all
friends/everybody or any combination.

The same slow convergence trend is in personal electronics too.  Why do I
have to decide if I want the 40Gb or 60Gb iPod - If you put wi-fi in it then
I wouldn't need more than 2Gb and my media could live on a server and stage
the 'next 3' songs on the device for playback.  Caching software is smart
enough to anticipate my playlist requirements.  If you network enable the
music player, why not put a phone in it?  Oh yeah, that's already been
done.  But then why doesn't that device have a good camera?  1.3megapixels?
that's not good, that's pre-Y2K.  Let's start with a 5MP camera and add
phone, no lets add PDA, no music, etc.  Why can't we have one device that
has all these things in it?  Because people keep spending their money to get
the next <slightly> cooler gadget in an effort to stay on the cutting edge.

</rant>

I'm sure this is similar to "kids" adoption of the telephone 60+ years ago.
Or radio however many more years ago, or any technology that was once
unavailable until it became ubiquitous.  the only people who worry about
being "old" because they haven't adopted the "hip" thing are already
hopelessly uncool anyway.
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