How to get rid of emails

Idea - "git for e-mail" with a few tweaks.

Problem with e-mail: • It's static, boring, and incriminating. • You cannot edit once you've sent, so you send another, thus clogging the inbox. • It's a hassle to configure clients

Solution:

Create new protocol that supports the features below.

Versioning - allows you to make changes to a message once it has been sent, but keeps a copy of the history from the time the recipient first read the message. Changes to messages invoke an "unread" notification.

Unsend - like AOL did in the 90s. If someone hasn't read the message delete it, otherwise it's too late! If someone hasn't seen the change you made to a message, then that can be undone as well.

Messages - several different types: text, calendar events, interactive todo list, geolocation information, and files. More kinds may come out as the spec is updated.

Security - configure your server and client to send hash of message contents to third party server to make sure content is not harmful or spam. From this point anyone can have a trusted server as long as it passes a security check by a third party server — kind of like SSL.

Privacy - disable message cloning (forwarding). Password protection? Who knows...

Why different types of messages? • To make parsing your inbox WAY faster • …does there need to be anything else?

I suppose this could also be used to create spontaneous social networks, which would take off the pressure of following or friending someone.

Wanna collaborate? tweet to @sbussard