Actually, the underlying system is absolutely putrid, a sentiment that pg agrees with based on his latest talk at PyCon. Mail is, unequivocally, the worst part of my daily existence and you are kidding yourself if you're calling it "not that bad".
Using pg's words, mail is a to-do list that anybody can put shit on, and I don't have any control over who puts things on it. We live in an era of technology that can do e-mail so much better, and replacing it must happen in my lifetime. Everything, from the architecture to the messages themselves, need an overhaul. The extraneous shit we bolt on to e-mail (SPF, DKIM, PGP)...it's just making it a big, unwieldy mess.
> mail is a to-do list that anybody can put shit on, and I don't have any control over who puts things on it
That's a misuse of email on the receipient's side, not on the system's side. Email is about messages, not about tasks. Although there might be more comfortable (i.e., more automatic) ways, there's nothing wrong with maintaining a TODO list that is 100% separate from the INBOX.
For example, in my TODO list I describe shortly (and in my own words) what I consider to be important. Why should I waste my time scanning through the INBOX everytime I want to check what needs to be done?
In other words: It's me who decides what gets on my TODO list, nobody else! I'm in total control because I'm a free citizen living in a democracy, and as such it's my responsibility to organize my life. In particular, to decide what to do (to-do) in my life.
If you decide to give other people access to your TODO list (e.g. by defining your INBOX to be your TODO list), you're voluntarily giving up control of an important part of your life. Nobody forces you to do that. In fact, almost every organization guideline strongly advises against that kind of nonsense. (The most famous one being the "Inbox zero" series at http://www.43folders.com/izero)
Email isn’t the problem, the problem is the client. Here’s just a few of the things we use email for today:
Todo list
Social networking notifications
Text messaging
Planning meetings
Planning vacation
Discussing issues with colleagues (mailing list)
Bill notifications
Newsletters / grey mail
File sharing
We do all of those different things and shove them into a single client that was designed (with minor alterations) over 30 years ago. What were they using email for then? To send “holy shit, this is cool!” messages to other neckbeards.
We should be using a separate client for all of these uses. Email is nothing more than a messaging protocol. You could launch a group texting app and use email as the delivery protocol. Your user base would instantly be every person with an internet connection. It wouldn’t matter that person A has your app and person B doesn’t, you could make it transparent to the person that has the app and pitch to the person that doesn’t.
The biggest obstacle to this is that we all use regular old email clients today and increasing the already incredible noise would not be without backlash. I think you have to start out with apps that don’t require adding to your message count (a notification app that scrapes your inbox, for example).
Meanwhile startups are trying and failing to make every service its own silo that travels over port 80. This is what is most sickening about startup culture today, no one is creative about using the stuff that has been around forever and is used by everyone.
> mail is a to-do list that anybody can put shit on, and I don't have any control over who puts things on it.
If that's your complaint, then your beef isn't with email in particular, but with the mailbox paradigm in general. But I for one find that paradigm useful, and I respectfully disagree.
Using pg's words, mail is a to-do list that anybody can put shit on, and I don't have any control over who puts things on it. We live in an era of technology that can do e-mail so much better, and replacing it must happen in my lifetime. Everything, from the architecture to the messages themselves, need an overhaul. The extraneous shit we bolt on to e-mail (SPF, DKIM, PGP)...it's just making it a big, unwieldy mess.