Comment Re:Not the latest trend (Score 1) 235
That's like saying "the postal service is not going anywhere", because you need a mailing address to get a credit card, and you need a credit card to pay for internet service, and you need internet service to access your email. Sure, that's all true, but postal mail is clearly no longer the relevant means of communication for almost anyone. Given the general disdain for it among many people of even my generation, one might even argue that "postal mail is dying" despite it being a standard, universally used, and still necessary for vital functions.
To paraphrase the summary, written in 1995:
"Postal mail is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform on which new, innovative things can and have been built. In that way, the mail represents a different model from the electronic-only ecosystems like email we see proliferating across our computers and devices. Postal mail is a refugee from the public, accessible, more private 'pre-web world we lost'. It's an exciting landscape of freedom amidst the electronically walled gardens of email and AOL."