E-mail needs to be extended

To put it succinctly, the e-mail standard needs to be extended to incorporate other aspects of personal data management.  End of story.

But I will elaborate a little bit.  But I will not get too much into the reasons why this has to happen and why this solution is the one that needs to happen (please see preceeding post.)

Right now the primary protocols for the transmission, archival, and retreival of e-mail messages are IMAP, POP3, and SMTP.  SMTP is a message routing protocol designed to make sure that mail gets from an origin to a destination.  It takes into account various things related to aspects of routing of messages, which are transparent to sender and receiver but which those who operate backend systems need to be aware of.

IMAP and POP3 are related to basically archival and retreival.  There are also backend aspects related to these functions which are transparent to sender and receiver.  IMAP is the most advanced system and essentially defines a cloud-based information storage technology.

These systems need to be augmented.  Since they already handle personal information transmission, storage, and retreival augmenting them to support even further forms of personal information is actually not that big of a deal.  Basically there are semantic differences between the data of a personal calendar and e-mail messages, or contact data.

The above mentioned protocols are actually implemented in real-life via daemons.  Nearly all of the most important daemons which actually handle these activities are Open Source projects.  Postfix, Sendmail, Exim, Courier are some of the most important ones.

Right now when a person gets an ISP account – for an average person this usually means shared hosting on a Linux or BSD server – part of what they pay for is to use the above-daemons to process their personal information.

What a great way to spend one’s money wisely – not getting exploited by some huge, government-bribing company which is trying to take over the world and erode everyone’s rights – but by a company which works to maintain a well-functioning backend to serve clients, using Open Source technology to its fullest.

What another great way to spend money, to support developers who work on developing this backend technology which spreads into educational institutions and developmental activities which encourage sharing and interchange of knowledge, mentoring, best practices, open-standards, etc.

How significantly different this is than going the way of Google, Apple, or Facebook and being essentially a slave.  Because people want “free” this or “free” that – they want “free” e-mail, “free” calendering, or “free” networking on their $600 phone which they pay $100/month for wireless service for, they are willing to sell themselves out and become slaves.

People need to start thinking right and there needs to be guidance occuring at the right levels to make sure that things get going on the right tracks, not the wrong ones as they currently are.


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