Receiving my first true “Internet email” 20 years ago, generated some odd waves – like opening gifts on Christmas day.
Years prior, the use of similar email at college to communicate with European universities had nothing of the same effect; the late 80’s were clearly focusing on a still unknown future, with imminent technological and political change.
Today, email consists of 80% or more spam with the remaining 20% being mostly unsolicited offers from peers. Getting a handful of domain lists to buy from every day makes me wonder: what if those emails cost money to send.
The beauty of crowdfunding and other activities that involve a large number of participants with small financial contribution per person, is that many such contributions amount to a large grand total. It’s easier to collect large amounts of money from many small contributors than from a single, large donor.
Similarly, if every email cost – for example – one penny to send out, the benefits would be two-fold:
- Dramatic drop in spam, as every email would have a cost associated with its dispatch, and
- Accumulation of considerable amounts from these $0.01 contributions, to be used for humanitarian purposes.
The email protocol is more or less defined and allows for the implementation of such layers. Currently, email reaches its destination simply because it’s an open communication of servers using the email protocol. If that were to be amended, the remaining part would be the gateway managing financial transactions. One would prepay $1 for 100 emails and the average person never sends that many in a week, unless they are professionals or spammers.
It remains to be seen how much of the original “free Internet” will remain intact for the years to come.
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