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Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies

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On 2016-03-10, Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> wrote:

> On Wed, 2016-03-09, Walter Banks wrote:
>
>> I met Ray Tomlinson a couple times, he was at the Sussex conference in 
>> 1973 and at the Washington conference on networking a few months later.
>>
>> By the time of the Sussex conference in there was a working email system 
>> at ARPAnet.
>
> And now in 2016, there's not really a working email system on the
> Internet.  Outside work, most people I know seem to use email as only
> a way to be fed information from various companies.  It's not a major
> person-to-person medium.
>
> I used to think in the future people would have reliable, permanent
> mail addresses and use PGP for encryption.  But instead we seem to be
> jumping between different proprietary services instead, like Facebook.
>
> It's a pity, because internet mail as it used to work, between people,
> was such a powerful idea.  On the other hand, so was Usenet ...

The important distinction is that Usenet and e-mail belong to nobody.
Things have come full circle.  In the '60s computing was centralized
for the simple reason that computers were so expensive that only medium
to large corporations could afford even one.  The Internet and cheap
personal computers made distributed processing possible.  But now the
pendulum has swung back, and computing is once again becoming centralized
in the hands of agencies such as Google and Facebook.  The Cloud is the
final step, for those foolish enough to entrust themselves to it (or
unfortunate enough to not know how to resist).

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
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Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2016-03-09 15:42 -0500
  Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2016-03-10 18:54 +0000
    Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Fred Smith <fred@smith.com> - 2016-03-10 20:47 +0000
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-03-11 04:20 +0000
    Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-03-11 04:20 +0000
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2016-03-11 21:12 +0000
        Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-03-11 22:05 +0000
    Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2016-03-10 21:48 -0800
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies "Sam Crean" <sg55443@gmail.com> - 2016-03-11 19:43 +1100
      Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2016-03-11 09:07 +0000
    Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2016-03-11 08:13 +0000
  Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2016-03-10 15:49 -0600
  Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2016-03-11 15:00 -0800
    Re: Ray Tomlinson, inventor of modern email, dies Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2016-03-11 16:09 -0800

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