[OT] Why are you using the GPG / PGP keys?

[Mark H. Wood]

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 12:37:42PM -0400, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
> On 5/26/2013 11:12 AM, Hauke Laging wrote:
> > E-Mail will still be there in ten years.
> 
> In related news, you can still buy buggy whips:
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Abetta-Buggy-Whip-Black-66/dp/B002HIX7P8
> 
> Nobody is saying email will go away.  I've only said that email is seen
> by the upcoming generation as an ancient technology that their parents
> use, that the upcoming generation does not use email as a preferred
> method of communication, and that this does not make me bullish on the
> long-term prospects of email.
> 
> Will it still be around in ten years?  Sure.  But so will buggy whips.

Hmm.  Each upcoming generation declares many things to be ancient
practice that their parents use, no longer relevant.  A few years
later they have found out why their parents use it and are using a lot
of it themselves.  It might be useful to look at the just-got-here
generation to see what *they* use, now that they have so much more
official business than they had in school a few years ago.

It also might be interesting to break down interpersonal communication
by categories and see whether different material is migrating to new
media at different rates.  Are tired jokes we've all seen a million
times moving off of email to Twitter faster than detailed business or
technical discussion, for example?  Were we doing stuff by email five
years ago which really didn't fit the email model very well, which
stuff is today escaping to media better designed for it?  Are newer
channels swelling with content because nobody thought seriously of
sharing *that* when email (or a phone call, or a paper letter) was the
best available channel?

I'm not even sure who would study such things.  Anthropologists, I suppose.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood at IUPUI.Edu
Machines should not be friendly.  Machines should be obedient.
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