Atomic age
Cindy Cohn writes in EFF Deep Links:
Email being basically free isn't a bug. It's a feature that has driven the digital revolution. It allows groups to scale up from a dozen friends to a hundred people who love knitting to half-a-million concerned citizens without a major bankroll.Ironically this misses an important trend: email no longer drives communities; mailing lists are being replaced by blogs and feeds. Readers originate requests to blogs—so if micropayment system is introduced, everyone will pitch in, starting a microfundraiser.
posted by jrp at 11:54 AM
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2 Comments:
Um but what about we simple people who just email other people (that we've met on the net or otherwise) because that's how we have a form of conversation?
You don't have the equivalent of that in a blog/newsgroup.
There is a difference between a conversation and a mass mailing. First, mass mailing by definition is high volume. Second, conversation happens between you and a member of your social network, or at least with another human being and not a commercial entity.
It is possible to develop a system in which conversations are practically free (does an access fee of $10/year sound reasonable?), and mass mailings are expensive enough to make all email spam unprofitable.
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