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I agree completely.

Email is a foundational technology within the business space. It exists in common formats, with slow-changing protocols widely compatible with their forbears, and similar across the marketplace. It is the deep, slow-moving tectonic plate on which we build a myriad of other business. It is a (largely) immutable record agreed to across a range of servers. Sure we can resend an email to a customer, but we can't edit the email they have already received. It is trusted, and it is shared.

I have no problem with an app that makes reading emails easier, something which combines long threads of back and forth argument into a simple list of shared understanding, but it is important that all that back-and-forth exists because, years from now, we might want to know how we reached that consensus. We might want to know those rationalisations.

With AMP-for-email we might just need to rely on Google's slick design and their simple response of "Don't worry about why you agreed, just trust us that you did."




> It is the deep, slow-moving tectonic plate on which we build a myriad of other business.

I agree. I think it is worth considering the concept of Shearing Layers [1] - where successful artefacts (buildings, systems, organisations) tend to be composed of layers that change at different rates, and this confers stability and adaptability. Layers that change rapidly (tech-mediated culture, web technology, etc) need lower layers that move slower (net infrastructure, http, email, etc.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shearing_layers


Exactly - The fast learns, the slow remembers.




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