Re: [GNU/consensus] [SocialSwarm-D] Why support "Reset the Net" ? I don't get it

[carlo von lynX]

On Wed, May 07, 2014 at 11:49:16AM +0100, Michael Rogers wrote:
> If email will still be around next year (and in ten years) then
> improving the security of email isn't a wasted effort. The world is

Yes it is wasted, because if you need to install a software to have 
secure email it should't try to use SMTP underneath. It's pointless.
There is no gain in encrypted e-mail once a new system is available.

And it is a detrimental effort, teaching people to use PGP
- wastes some of their precious time and brain cells
- gives them a false sense of security
- builds up resistancies against embracing a proper solution
  (the harshest negative reaction i always get from those that
   somehow accepted the mess that PGP over SMTP is)

> full of obsolete systems that we maintain and patch until we can
> finally get rid of them - Linux, representative democracy, TCP/IP,
> nation states...

You mention 3 examples where you can't easily say there are alternatives
which are a lot better and it's silly not to use them.

Whereas for representative democracy, I believe it can be replaced.
Liquid democracy is a great prototype, it needs refinement.
Unlike the new distributed mail system, LD still needs some brain time.

> I *should* be using Qubes, but I still install security patches on my
> Linux box, and I'm grateful that someone wrote those patches.

Qubes is a Linux too, but an interesting one.
Can it be recreated fully from source?

> You spend a lot of energy criticising people for working to improve
> obsolete systems - I guess you think they should be working on
> replacement systems instead. But both are valuable. We need to improve
> email *and* replace it, because even if the whole world starts using
> Pond tomorrow, email (and HTTP, and all the other obsolete junk) will
> be around for a long time.

That I think is the #1 fallacy the Internet is suffering from.
Band-aids are costing us enormous energy - especially since 99%
of competent people choose to focus on those, thinking they are
low-hanging fruit, which is also a fallacy - because they end up
getting tangled up in complexities that are worse then getting
started fresh from the new paradigms of the GNU internet.

Of course email will be around, but it is humbug to think of it as
something that could be secure. Just stop using it for anything
private. It's like saying we really really need postcard encryption.