[p2p-research] "Many of us will not send mail to gmail.com"

[marc fawzi]

my reply below was to Michel and Ryan

On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:49 AM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's resilience and autonomy (thru 'redundant inter-dependence') not
> robustness or efficiency. The appeal of investing our attention (and
> potentially our energy) in p2p email solutions is for those of us who
> wish to guarantee resilience and autonomy. A different mindset than
> those who just want to use the tool that is currently most convenient.
>
> The issue is resilience and autonomy are "principles" and not just
> logical measures against some unthinkable disaster that may or may not
> happen.
>
> However, whenever the unthinkable happens you'll be happy you had
> stuck to those principles...
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 1:48 AM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
>> On Sun, May 10, 2009 13:28:20 PM +0700, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>> I'll second wholeheartedly this explanation by Ryan,
>>>
>>> especially for non-tech oriented people like myself, we want to
>>> drive the car, but are not interested in knowledge about the motor.
>>
>> There are technical reasons too, to not like centralized email
>> providers, and Marc explained those well, but the nature of the core
>> issue is different.  I don't think the car motor is an accurate
>> analogy in the context of the question I asked.
>>
>> The nature of the question is not "why don't you look under the hood
>> and learn how to build or fix a car engine? It feels great!"
>>
>> The question I'm asking is on the same type of
>>
>> "why are you buying cars from a company that is known to adopt child
>> labor to keep prices low?"
>>
>> The question above **is** a real exhageration, of course. I'm the
>> first to not take it seriously. It's just a quick way to stress the
>> point that the core issues is not technical, nor does it require
>> technical expertise or interest.
>>
>> A much more accurate example of what category my question was meant to
>> fall in is:
>>
>> "why, whenever you need a cab ride, you keep calling the cab company
>> which officially uses only one single gas station for all its taxis (=
>> if that one, centralized gas source breaks, none of those cabs will
>> work) and officially declares that they keep a voice recorder always
>> on in all their cars?"
>>
>> Again, this doesn't mean necessarily that Gmail is bad period, is just
>> an example that a big part of the question isn't technical at all.
>>
>>> Gmail has by far the most interesting ecology of services, it is
>>> what made the crucial difference that losing my laptop without
>>> backup wasn't actually a catastrophe, because my material is
>>> available through the gmail archive.
>>
>> What saved your day is using web-based email and online backups. I
>> don't question such services, both of which are available in many
>> other ways. It is just curious to realize that this is the place where
>> the percentage of people who don't use other solutions (even if the
>> decision isn't technical) is quite higher than elsewhere.
>>
>>> Centralization is not inherently worse in terms of robustness. Full
>>> p2p architectures would have their own problems.
>>
>> I absolutely agree on that, as I wrote in the "thoughts on physical
>> production..." piece already linked.
>>
>> Marco
>> --
>> Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
>> software is used *around* you:            http://digifreedom.net/node/84
>>
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>
>
>
> --
>
> Marc Fawzi
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Marc-Fawzi/605919256
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcfawzi
>



-- 

Marc Fawzi
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