> the world at large dismissed OpenPGP encryption on mail as pointless
This is quite amazing, if you think about it. I'm not one to promote conspiracy theories, but if you look at how we horribly botched all implementations of E-mail encryption over the years (that includes lack of development, terrible UI, delays, bizarre and unimplementable in practice standards like S/MIME), it is quite an impressive story.
Meanwhile, the HTTP world mostly got things done, and instant messaging is in a pretty good shape (although I'm still amazed that so many people are willing to sync their entire phone book to Facebook for advertising purposes without a second thought).
This is quite amazing, if you think about it. I'm not one to promote conspiracy theories, but if you look at how we horribly botched all implementations of E-mail encryption over the years (that includes lack of development, terrible UI, delays, bizarre and unimplementable in practice standards like S/MIME), it is quite an impressive story.
Meanwhile, the HTTP world mostly got things done, and instant messaging is in a pretty good shape (although I'm still amazed that so many people are willing to sync their entire phone book to Facebook for advertising purposes without a second thought).