A Look Back at 50 Years of Email - SparkPost
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October 29, 2021 is a day to commemorate 50 years of email. Take a look back at how far email has come and where we're headed next.

Think about it, you can pick an e-mail domain anywhere and use any e-mail client on any platform, to send an e-mail to someone anywhere else… We just take that for granted, but if e-mail were newly invented today by a company like say Meta, all the billions of people in the world would have to belong to that same single company in order to send and receive mail to anyone else…

E-mail’s greatest success lies in it’s open standards and decentralisation. It will no doubt me replaced at some point in the future, as all technologies will, but let us hope that instant messaging and social networks go back to being open and decentralised (like they too were once).

See https://www.sparkpost.com/blog/a-look-back-at-50-years-of-email/

#technology #email #decentralisation #openstandards #deletemeta

    • GadgeteerZAOP
      3•3 years ago

      Yes exactly, they recognised that e-mail’s implementation was interoperable. We should not be sitting with this walled garden issue with some of the biggest social network and instant messengers.

    • Jack
      2•3 years ago

      Wow, never heard of this before, really cool project

    • @je_vv@lemmy.ml
      1•3 years ago

      It seems cool, particularly if already using gpg for signing/encrypting (it uses autocrypt), however, as based on openpg (gpg), it doesn’t support (perfect forward secrecy), but it’s the same for gpg signing/encrypting.

      What is really bad about delta chat, is that it doesn’t support (encrypted keys), which to me is really, really, a bad idea. Even openKeyChain (android) manages encrypted keys, as well as any desktop email client supporting gpg, so I really can’t see why delta chat wouldn’t.

      And though email is decentralized by nature, it still requires an email service provider. You might self host one, but not everyone can, so in the end, it’s not much different than having another messenger service, such as xmpp. With the advantage those other messengers support voice/video calls, which delta can’t, since it’s based on email in the end, and also most support perfect forward secrecy (some through double ratchet e2ee, like xmpp+omemo, or through other means, like jami).

      Though in the end, if no additional service is wanted, voice/video calls are not required, and no perfect forward secrecy is required, then delta might be an option. Thunderbird used to offer chatting as well, I’m wondering if it was based on delta chat, or the other way around, :(