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Hypothetical Death Match - E-mail vs. the Web
netbuzz writes "If you had no choice but to choose, which would you give up: access to e-mail or the Web? Both still exist, just not for you. Read how others are defending their decisions — and how a few just refuse to choose." From the article: "From Stewart Deck: 'The Web has become intertwined into so much that I do and so much that I want to know and learn about that without it I might as well move to a grass hut in Irkutsk. The Web brings me closer to words, thoughts and ideas far beyond my geographical boundaries. I use it for information, education, insight, entertainment, EVERYTHING. ... I certainly enjoy the convenience of e-mail but I think I could put together work-arounds that would hold up reasonably well in its absence.'"
Bob's sweating brow arched over the red buttons. Intensely aware of the large calibre handgun just behind his ear and the maniac holding it who was now forcing him to choose which button to press, he was unable to decide whether to remove email or web access from his life. His pleadings to the madman had been to no avail, it had come down to choosing. His hand strained, hovering over the fateful buttons, veins bulging under the skin as his blood pressure rose and his body temperature boiled his brain. The pain of impending loss was too great, made all the more horrible by the knowledge that it would be done by his own hand.
"Hurry up!" Snapped the crazed madman from between rotten teeth and foul breath. "I ain't got all day!" As he prodded the gun forward, digging the heavy barrel into Bob's temple, Bob quivered in fear. He knew from watching Dirty Harry movies that a handgun like that would blow his head clean off, the brain matter he was so proud of scattered over the ground like so much wet, red confetti.
Our geeky hero let out a strained whimper, a silent pleading for someone, anyone, to intervene and save him from this horrible choice. Simultaneous images of mailing lists and blogs swirled in his tortured mind. Finally, a decision took form. It took form with the certainty of the iceberg in front of the Titanic, and just like then, he came to the bitter conclusion that his fate was unavoidable.
Slowly, he turned to the madman. The fear had given way to a stony resignation and determination. He looked the madman straight in the eye and said "Shoot me, asshole."
I hate printers.
I'd rather have the world's largest public library than the world's largest postal service.
:)
Also, people can communicate by leaving post-it notes on books
email innit.
Fucking stupid story....
The latest Slashdot meme.
I could live without email as it hasn't been hopelessly intertwined into my life.... yet. I could always set up a discussion board/similar on my website for people to post whatever they wanted to email me with. Oh! And then I could have a program automatically parse that. And to post my replies!
Wait, what are we defining email as?
My UID is prime... is yours?
The Internets and it's vast network of tubes is far superior to email. Porn is on the net, not in email.
http://religiousfreaks.com/It would be a tough call. Give up the web or give up email. I don't think I could live in my geekdom without either one for very long. They go hand in hand like a Ferrari and an Acer Ferrari Laptop with a simulated carbon fiber case. (Well you get point.)If I had to choose I would give up email. Hey, there's always text messages.
I'd give up email. I'd actually be happy to give up email. In fact, I'm done with it! NO MORE EMAIL! NO MORE EMAIL! NO MORE EMAIL!
qualify as news here now?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Email. No thought required. I work in an office, and I get a ton of emails every day. Each one of them tends to cause work for me.
If HTTP was blocked at work though, I'd be looking for another job pretty quick. Saying that, my new company recently decided that I must take lunch at 12pm rather than 1pm and that was enough for me to accept interviews at other companies.
I can easily live without my emails. Actually, my would be far better without emails. Why do we have phones? :-)
...). So, only 5% of them are *actually* messages that worth reading. And, to be honest, its easier to just give a call to explain a problem or to ask for something.
:-)
I don't know about you, but 60% of my emails are spam. And 35% are automatic emails sent by stupid machines, telling me that I've deployed an application to some server (or informing me about a commit, or
So, my choice is obvious
ilex paraguariensis for all
If I want instant access to information, the web is my only choice.
If I want to talk to someone, I can use this fancy technology that I like to call a "phone."
The only people who I could see picking e-mail over the web are those who are either deaf or mute, or are so socially inept that they can't talk to people over the phone.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Although the article stated that if you had to choose web or e-mail (no webmail), what about forums like /. where its not webmail but serves as a bases for communication? It seems to me that forums like these would serve as an alternate to e-mail, but in a public way. Our e-mail is essential public already, the moment we hit send, but in forums like this, it is explicitly public. I wouldn't mind seeing forums for support issues rather than e-mail anyway.
From the looks of it, Email is just a subset of the internet. Therefore, if you can't have the "internet", you can't have "email".
However, if you can't have "email" in the traditional sense, you can still find workarounds because you still have "internet".
Therefore, this post of taking one vs the other makes no sense.
AS said, this should be easy. Think about the limitations of each of these. E-mail is a relatively unimportant medium as compared to the web I believe.. The web is so much more than that. If we didn't have e-mail, how many other ways are there that we could communicate?
Shopping on the web, data we enter... the accessibility that it gives us in so many different things. Without e-mail we would find another way to communicate effectively. Without the web, life as we know it would change drastically.
__________________________________________
http://hatchedeggs.blogspot.com/
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
Why isn't this just a new /. poll?
Politicians are like diapers - they should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.
If I didn't have the web, I wouldn't have to put up with questions like this.
Funnypics
Seeing as email is the only way I know how to communicate and express my thoughts, I'd definitely sacrifice the entire WWW for it. Seriously though, what is this? The lines between the various types of communication are becoming so blurred that there is absolutely no reason to separate things out like this. Look at SMS and Gmail/Talk. The lines. Blurred!
The virtual world been around for less than 50 years. I would prefer physical libraries that been around for thousands of years. Real books don't go out of style with the newest version of the hardware and/or software.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ouch, another mistype. The above should read:
btw, just as some mention about ways that we communicate without e-mail.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
So we don't have e-mail? Like SMTP and MAP/POP got zapped overnight? No sweat, we still have Web-based services such as gmail.
So what's that we need to decide again?
With all the spam and such (while it can be controled on an individual basis), email is going downhill. Soon enough it really won't be all that useful and will be replaced by alternatives (like IM, SMS, etc ). On the other hand, the web pushed is in a new age, where information is free. I honestly probably would probably be washing dishes at some restaurant instead of being a software architect, if I hadn't been able to suplement my education with the knowledge found on the web. So in my opinion, email can go where I think.
Pron comes from where?...The web! There's your answer.
There are numerous other ways to communicate :P
I'm not sure why IM is considered cheating if you give up on email. (You can't IM someone you don't know out of the blue; most companies don't have IM addresses listed, etc.) If IM is 'cheating' then isn't the telephone cheating, too? What about IRC? Is that cheating?
As the author says it's purely academic. My problem with these 'what-ifs' is that because they are unusual, the only way to give a sensible answer is to know all the extraneous details that are left to the imagination. What are the repercussions of breaking the rule? What are the limitations? What are the rules? Is it cheating to put up messages on forum, then phone your friends and tell them to go reply? On the flip side, it's probably cheating to email people and ask "can you do a google search and tell me..." but is it cheating if you just email them the question? In this day and age, if you ask someone a question, they'll start with a web-search anyways.
If I had to decide, I'd also select the web. Email is one of many communication modes available today (and its functionality is easily emulated elsehow), but when it comes to information collection/dissemination, the web is really unique.
"Which contributes more to your daily productivity [or enjoyment of life]?" is a valid question.
But you can't take away one or the other (especially just for me) without positing some random, strange change to the world. Why is it gone? Government intervention? Lunatic planting an email-controlled bomb in my head? Broken mouse preventing me from accessing that icon? Bizarre bug in IP routers worldwide?
I gave up asking asking pointless what-if questions as a sophomore. Try rephrasing the question and you might actually learn something. (And the answer appears to be damn-near unanimous by people interpreting what the questioner meant rather than what it said.)
I'd give up email, you can replace it with snail mail, the internet however is not replacable.
Somehow I doubt it. But I'm pretty sure it's expressible as the sum of two primes.
And I'm positive that it's expressible as the product of twenty two or fewer primes.
--MarkusQ
P.S. And to answer the main question, I couldn't do without either. Just the thought of having all that productive time back gives me the heebie jeebies.
I'd choose to lose my email access. I can just call my friends on my phone.
But if you were to take away my Wikipedia and Slashdot, I would just DIE.
Its an impractical question since you (almost) in every way, shape, and form have both if you have one. Its just as simple as telling some one that they can have either the cure or the hypdermic, but not both. One without the other doesn't make sense.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
This is a little like saying: "If you had to give up either food or water which would you give up?" Gee, I can live a couple weeks longer without food than without water so I'll give up food!
Okay, maybe that's a little melodramatic. This is a little like saying: "If you had to choose, would you give up buying food and only grow/raise your own or would you give up any form of transportation faster than a horse?"
There's no point in even considering the question. As a practical matter, any civilization shift which requires one of the choices also requires the other.
And perhaps that is the point: in less than two decades email and the web have become as central to our society as the phone, the car and the grocery store.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Geez, that's what I hate worst about geeks and the Internet. It's all abstractions from someone's parent's basement. I say we do it right this time. Let's have a real death match!
Come on, Email. Everyone calls you the killer app, let's see what you can do. You gonna stand there and let the Web knock you into the corner, or are you gonna do something about it?
And how about you, eh, Web? How 'bout you get off your bloated ass and start throwing some of that weight around? Or maybe you... can't? Wassamatter, Webbie gotta booboo? Come on, Web, FINISH HIM.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
e-mail vs. web
E-mail wins!
Pah!
Who needs email?
Web gives you access to your blog!
Blogging via email is called 'spamming'.
(not that I am a blogger, in fact I find the blog phenomenon extremely lame... just saying; web obviously gives more and equivalent functionality).
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
yep.. since email is implemented via IP packets, you pitch it and straight away code the protocols for the exact same thing.
patent it..
give it away free to pro-gpl and anti-drm groups, and charge proprietary houses and DRM vendors through the nose for your fortune! : )
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
but the prices on v1aGR4 are so good... and a really important person from Nigeria just sent me an offer you will all be jealous of... and besides I don't think the web has all these .scr files I get.
This
future mother-in-law: so, what do you do? guy: i'm a penetration tester. ....fill in rest.....
it's instantaneous, it can be logged in and kept running in the background, it's method of delivery via popup windows is the ultimate lazy man's solution. no checking through web interfaces, no delays as your mail client periodically checks, all messages you miss are right on the desktop, and conversations happen live rather than by email tag.
From an organizational standpoint it's even better.
all messages from one person appear in one window (or tab in the case of some better clients), anything you get pops onto your desktop.. youre FORCED to get rid of clutter.. unlike email where spam can be ignored and is piled up rather quickly.
Finally, because of the way IM works.. you can actually attack spammers with things like aim bombs.. YES.. PAYBACK!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Agreed, and it's a bit sad that there's the implicit assumption that it's necessary to everyone. Five years of unemployment shows one what's really important. Doing without the web, or it's children will demonstrate what's really important.
This is kind of a very theortic exercise, since the web isn't really something clearly defined, neither is email. If we close up the SMTP/POP/IMAP ports there is still all that webmail around, instant messaging, IRC and stuff. Ok, so lets count them all as email, but what about blogs or forums? You can't close them without closing one of the most important aspects of the web, namely that you are not limited to being a consumer, but also can easily become a producer of content. Last not least you could also easily substitude email with SMS or simply by the phone itself, almost everybody has mobile phones these days, so communication wouldn't come to an end just by closing email.
So I would say in the end the web clearly wins, since email really can be easily worked around, while the Web really can't. However turning the web into a passive consume-only medium would clearly be a very large loss, but given the 'rules' of the exersie it wouldn't be an issue since rest of the world would still be participating, so the richness of the web would be preserved.
I consider democratically generated information over the web more important than email. Also I can access email using web-based email if I have web access.
With Email we at least saw this one coming and have pretty good methods of dealing with spam. (The next spam frontiers are blogs, IM & VOIP, but that can be dealt with easily too.)
While this might sound a little FUDish. Email is already dying a slow death, communications tools like IM, blogging, voip and video conferencing are making Email feel impersonal and technologically outdated.
You can't have the web without some kind of e-communication. If one didn't exist or you gave up one, the void would be filled by something like subscribing to rss feeds.
Like most people here, if i didn't read email, I'd get fired. If i didn't have web access, I wouldn't have a job!
Gotta pick web over email. It's possible to contact people in other ways than e-mail (snail mail and phone) (and in fact, I rarely use e-mail as it is). Web has no substitute for its price point.
Oh come on! You can use one of those web-to-e-mail services and not lose anything if you stuck with e-mail. In fact, someone seems to have signed me up for one since I daily get web pages e-mailed to me, though unfortunately they are just advertisements. They are even nice enough to put the text into an image so I won't lose the nice fonts. Other times they send me lots of raw HTML that my e-mail client doesn't understand. The future's all in e-mail, I tell you!
If all I had was e-mail, how would I get people's e-mail addresses? For my current friends and family, I either already have them, or I ask them. All the other e-mail addresses I have come off the Web. Without web, new contacts would be established as they were in pre-internet days. I'd have to find out about clubs, social groups, etc. by reading printed newspapers, attending their meetings, and striking up conversations with people who gave me their business cards. Very ineficient!
With just Web and no e-mail, they could put snail-mail addresses or FAX numbers on their pages and I could send them letters and faxes. Very 1985, but considerably more liveable than the former scenario.
I'm just happy we don't have to make such a silly choice. The two tools have grown together; they feed off eachother.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Would you give up liquids or solids?
Maybe, just maybe, those who refused to choose were simply telling the pollster to fuck off?
So long as I got email, usenet, irc, and gopher (archie, w00t!), I'm good to go. Telnet BBS's are excellent replacements for discussion boards. I do 99.9% of my browsing in lynx already today, so it wouldn't be that different anyway.
If I had either SMTP or HTTP it would take me no more than a few days to get the other, and that's if I had to write the proxy myself, using nothing but an Apple ][ and a 300 baud modem. In Forth. Without a language card. On a MONOCHROME monitor. Uphill. In the snow. Both ways.
How about Usenet? Do I get NNTP? Gopher? FTP? Telnet? UUCP?
Christ, what a STUPID question.
For a moment, let's look below the layers of abstraction and ask ourselves...
At its' core, what is email?
It is an application using a protocol that allows for the two-way transfer of ASCII text files. There is hardly a single transfer protocol in existence on the Internet (in fact if there is one, I don't know about it) that does not allow the same. Granted, not all of them *deliver* said text in exactly the same way, but that's because many of them were primarily designed to do other things...but when you think about it...IRC, NNTP, HTTP, (the Web protocol) and Gopher were all designed primarily to transport text. I've seen IRC/email gateway scripts before...if you know enough about both protocols and the syntax involved, they're actually fairly trivial to write. FTP is probably the only protocol I can think of which was designed specifically for binary transfer, rather than text.
The *only* thing that actually really caused the Internet to become mainstream at all was that HTTP started supporting the transfer of graphic images...and it's worth knowing that Tim Berners-Lee, the protocol's inventor, was (AFAIK anywayz) actually initially opposed to that idea.
So sure...block email, and I could work around it. Block the Web, and it'd be a lot more difficult.
ENM is my attempt at a free and open system for communcation.
ENM stands for ENM is not email.
Thank you.
No, really, thank you.
I have found email very useful for years, but for the last couple it's usefulness has been declining. There is now so much filtering of spam happening, and at all levels, that I no longer consider email a form of communication to rely on: anything important goes by fax or snail. It seems that these days everybody and his uncle wants to spam filter for you. Sometimes I have found hosting companies simply apply spam filtering to my clients' domains assuming that it is a wanted feature. One client lost 80% of his online orders for a week to a spam filter.
It's a damn shame really - email has such potential. Sure spam is a problem, but often the solution is worse than the problem.
The web? Now, the web I wouldn't want to give up. Can't I give up another Internet protocol instead? Like Telnet maybe?
... webmail!
I dont know why they lump in IM, chat etc for "email" why not instead simply say no forms of communication, but you can still access information, or information and no communication. That is what it really comes down too, and really I wouldnt choose. I'm a web developer, so I need all forms of communication for development, as well as access to the web for; well the projects I'm developing.
TruePunk | Games
I live in a grass hut in Irkutsk, you insensitive clod!
I suspect a lot of people here have never experienced the Internet without the web.
Let me tell you: it wasn't that bad!
Instead of forums and such, we had mailing lists and usenet. They both uses basically the same format for messages, so you could often use the same client to deal with both. They had some really nice advantages, such as almost all of the UI was done by client. You could easily change how stuff looked and worked anyway you wanted without changing the whole system and all the forums (newsgroups) worked the same. It isn't like web forums and blogs, where some have threading, and some don't, and each has a different navigation system, and most don't have nice ways of just reading new messages.
Before there were things like sourceforge and freshmeat, there were comp.sources.*. When the latest update of something you used was released, you just grabbed it off usenet as it rolled by. If you missed it, you could use ftp or even ftp-mail.
I'm not saying life was better before the web, just that it was quite livable. Almost all of the large multi-user systems I've used since the 1970s have had email, so I guess the web has only been around for less than half my "computer life".
It is no coincidence that spam pretty much killed usenet just went the internet was getting popular. I guess all the different blog/forum systems somewhat protect them from spam since you can't just write a simple program to cross-post your greencard spam to all the blogs/forums like you could with usenet. If spam does end up killing email like it did usenet, life is going to be rough for IM/blogs because spammers will be forced to put their full effort on them.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
The title really says it all. Does webmail (GMail, Yahoo Mail, etc.) count as e-mail? Or does it count as part of the web? If I give up web access, will I lose access to webmail sites?
I believe that e-mail and the web are so intertwined, what with HTML e-mails and HTML interfaces to e-mail inboxes (aka webmail) that to eliminate access to one would cripple access to the other?
To answer the question, I would have to say I would rather lose access to e-mail. I'd still have access to my cell phone, and, like others, I would probably be able to set up a discussion board of some sort in order to handle electronic textual communication.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Jesus titty-fucking Christ! Not reading the fine article is one thing, but would it really kill you to read the first 2 sentences of the summary before responding?
Sentence 2: Both still exist, just not for you.
drop email keep web, use webmail
People apparently didn't read the article where in this thought experiment you are suppose to actually give one up. Not use web mail or im or any crutches.
From the viewpoint of my daily job: Only e-mail... it allows for people communicating, it's easy to filter crap (virusses, spam and anything else larger than 25Mb) out at the entrance and it doesn't allow for stupid uncontrollable flash,wmv,avi to clog up the bandwidth or people to go randomly to random sites to waste time. I know the web can be filtered by proxy, but that bring much more trouble with it than benefit.
From the viewpoint of my private life: I can get to my e-mail through the web, I can use forums, I can use Slashdot, my own website etc. to get messages across. There is much more to enjoy on the web and it allows to attach or create messages for communications. The web is also harder to control than e-mail and thus less prone to privacy compromise.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
what about web based email?
Don't hold back...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I've always preferred the phone or in-person conversations to email. I barely even read the email that I have. Coworkers that prefer to email or IM you to getting up and just talking to you bug the heck out of me. I'm three cubicles away! You could get my attention by just raising your voice if you're too lazy to get out of the seat!
At any rate, the web provides me with useful information and infinite diversion. Email provides me with... a slow, inefficient, redundant method of communication. There's no contest.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Retarded. News. Story.
Ever.
I heard that Taco and crew are gonna smoke weed and sit on the couch thinking of more "what ifs" for tomorrow's stories as well. Perhaps there should be a new "what if" section for slashdot!
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
If you need porn in your mailbox, someone will figure out a way to do it. One frame at a time if they need to!
FWIW, you obviously don't get the same spam that I do...
I could still communicate without e-mail, simply give people a web form address to send me stuff :D
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Just set up a message board website that hides comments for everyone but those who can authenticate. Your address is now your URL.
Or is that cheating?
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0. NO CARRIER ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Than how do we sign up for all those free pr0n sites??
But seriously,what about Games???? Are we gonna have to go back to snail mail for all our conformations on games????
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I opened up my email inbox to see if there's anything in there that I couldn't live without.
...
...
... so ... we would need our email back. IM is great at work, but it's not persistent enough for many things. It's good for "I can't access X server, can you help me?" and not so good for things like "this client needs X done next friday."
The last few emails look something like
Welcome to thinkfree
Your YouOS Registration Confirmation
Status Alert: Domain Change Notification
Amazon.com recommends Columbo - The Complete Fifth Season and more
eCheck Payment Complete
Even with a decent spam filter, there really isn't much about email that I care about. The problem is how often email is used to identify who you are. How would I reset passwords? Yes - *even if* I forgot the secret answer I created a few years ago.
Really, my inbox is only confirmation emails (Welcome to X) and notices (eCheck Payment Complete). Lots of people use services like MySpace to keep in touch with friends and message them through that. I keep in touch with almost all of my friends and family via IM. If email wasn't required for identify verification, I probably wouldn't have it.
Keep in mind that I'm talking about my personal email. Without email at work, we would simply need another messaging and calendaring system to replace it
Can i choose for an amputation instead ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I spent last year in a tiny outpost up on the high Antarctic plateau where we had no web access, but limited email (two coms a day, only small messages). I managed to do everything important with email, even reading slashdot (thanks to email-to-web portals) and updating my website. I've been using email for exactly 20 years and it would be very hard to give up this regular contact with friends and family, even though spammers are really ruining it for everyone, including me (I had to dispose of my original address because of excess spam).
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The article talks about not cheating. That means you can no use webmail to cheat having no email. But the answer lies in not being able to cheat with finding a substitute for the web. This mean no HTML postings, because that would mean that you were sending webpages via mail.
I believe we are on to something here. No HTML emails or usenetpostings anymore. W00t!
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
a lawn mower or a swimming pool? You know, because they're about as closely related to each other.
In Korea, Email is only for old people.
Is this article suggesting that we might soon have to choose one or the other due to a clogging of tubes? What if we could just use the web for the internets our company forwards to us in links, and email for the attached web pages in the opened-up sore cists that microsoft is rolling out antivirals for?
The web can implement email. It's considerably harder for email to implement the web. Webmail sucks, but using SMTP as a web browser would suck more.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Email is a service that's older than the internet. It's a hodgepodge of crummy protocolls bolted on oneanother throughout the years, spoiled by a bunch of incompliant clients and their interpretation of how email is supposed to look. 4 standards of encryption and millions of people who think the way outlook breaks email is ok. There is no way that email will ever get repaired. It would be best if email would die on the spot and be replaced by a strictly enforced open standard with integrated threading, seperation of content, logic and presentation, unbreakable, meta-data based quoteing and forced encryption. I'd give a three-digit sum of money for that to happen.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Ok here's another one. Now, we know our computers work with binary data: 0 and 1.
But which one would you chose? Now, they both exist, but not for you. So what would it be? 1 or 0?
Stay tuned for more pointless polls and 11.
I just spent 30 minutes in a chat board meeting (5 people in 3 continents) arguing that issues are better debated in a forum rather than email. The email camp won (4 to 1) because 'forums are too confusing for the average person'! I'd choose the web but my colleagues would choose email.
The smarter home exchange, http://switchhomes.net
So there are stupid questions, after all.
The question ignores the fact that this strange "Internet" thing is built on multi-purpose protocols. How, exactly, do you intend to enforce Layer-7 limitations on a Layer-3 network?
If I can only have web, it'll take me gmail and a minute at most to have e-mail as well. If I can only have e-mail, surfing the web will be slow, but there are still sites out there that'll send you any website as an e-mail in response to an e-mail request and it should be trivial to automate that, as a first step and grow more comfortable from there.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Email brings me: Work related stuff, spam, emails from relatives, spam, bills, and spam. Oh yea, and spam.
The Web brings me: Porn, work avoidance, time waster sites, entertainment, movie listings, directions to the party, Porn, and slashdot...
I'll keep the web, hands down.
The web can be substituted by... hrm. FTP? Not really. Gopher? Hah! Maybe if the web was disabled for everyone, but this is just me... nothing on Gopher anymore. Telnet, ssh? Nope.
But email can be substituted by many other things. Message boards, instant messaging, comment threads, IRC... there are a hundred ways to communicate on the Internet, but only one way to put up content for others to view.
So I choose to lose email. I wouldn't even miss it much.
The Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Would you rather have braking or steering?
Would you rather have vision or hearing?
Would you rather have a coffee, or a cup to put it in?
Would you rather have electricity or running water?
Would you rather have a plate or silverware?
Would you rather have hands or feet?
Would you rather have housing or transit?
The world must know!
That's the way the challenge should be explained. You can use the web, but no posting, no forums no webmail no IRC etc. I'd still probably have to go with the web, as long as I can send faxes from work.
...and not just in Korea.
...but might as well just tell them personally via IM when you next see them online.
If you asked the average person under 20 if they'd give up email or the web, they'd definitely give up email since the only time they probably ever use it is to register for websites that require it, or MAYBE to talk to some of their older relatives.
If they really need to leave someone a message, they can do it on myspace, or if the person's a good friend you SMS their cellphone...
what about webmail?
surfing is a great way of learning BUT how do you pass on what you learnt? email creates a one to one ability to pass knowledge on. In the early days on bitnet that was enought. so i'd simply go back to it.
Conceivably, these sorts of questions could give rise to interesting debate. Or you could get a life.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Webmail