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C00002 00002	%networ[f88,jmc]		Networks considered harmful --- for electronic mail
C00008 00003	\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ 1989 by John McCarthy}
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%networ[f88,jmc]		Networks considered harmful --- for electronic mail
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\title{ NETWORKS CONSIDERED HARMFUL---FOR ELECTRONIC MAIL}

	Electronic mail, using the ARPAnet and other networks has
been in use for almost 20 years.  The widespread use of telefax
is more recent.  However, unless electronic mail is freed from
dependence on the networks, I predict it will be wiped out by
telefax for most uses in spite of its many advantages over
telefax.  These advantages include the fact that
information is transmitted more cheaply as character streams than
as images.  Multiple addressees are readily accommodated.
Moreover, messages transmitted as character streams can be readily
filed, edited and searched.

	The reason why telefax will wipe out electronic mail is
that telefax works by using the existing telephone network
directly.  To become a telefax user, it is only necessary to buy
a telefax machine for a price between \$1,000 and \$5,000
(depending on features) and to publicize one's fax number on
stationery, on business cards and in telephone directories.
Once this is done anyone in the world can communicate with you.
No politics, no complicated network addresses.

	Electronic mail could work the same way, but because of a
mistake by DARPA about 1970, i.e. making a special-purpose,
special-politics network the main vehicle for electronic mail, it
was combined with other network uses that require higher
bandwith.

	Another mistake was UUCP.  It uses the telephone network, but
there are two blunders in its design.

	1. It assumes that both parties are using the UNIX operating
system rather than using a general mail protocol.  This isn't very
serious, because other systems could always pretend to be UNIX
sufficiently well to implement the protocols.

	2. It requires that the sender of a message have login privileges
on the receiver.  This has resulted in a system of relaying messages
that involves gateways and complicated addresses.  This results in
politics in getting connected to the gateways and causes addresses
often to fail.

	There has been a proliferation of networks and message services
on a variety of time-sharing utilities.  The connections between these
networks require politics and often fail.  A whole industry is founded
on the technologically unsound ideas of competitive special purpose
networks and storage of mail on mail computers.

	The solution is to go to a system in that resembles fax in that
the ``net addresses'' are just telephone numbers.  The simple form
of the command is just

\noindent MAIL $\langle$user$\rangle$@$\langle$telephone number$\rangle$.

	The sending machine dials the receiving machine just as is
done with fax.  When the receiving machine answers, the sender
announces that it has a message for $\langle$user$\rangle$.  Implementing
this can involve either implementation of protocols in a user machine or a
special machine that pretends to be a user of the receiving machine or
local area network.  The former involves less hardware, but the latter
involves less modification to the operating system of the receiving
machine.

	Of course, one way of accomplishing this is for the makers
of fax machines to offer ASCII service as well.  This will avoid
many users being forced to print out their messages in a convenient
OCR font and transmit them by fax, whereupon the receiver will
scan them with an OCR scanner in order to get them back into
computer form.

	Maybe this will be the only way the world will get rid of
the substantially useless and actually harmful mail network industry.
\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ 1989 by John McCarthy}
\smallskip\noindent{This draft of NETWOR[F88,JMC] TEXed on \jmcdate\ at \theTime}

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