"Interactive email" is basically Slack.
We should make Slack a new internet protocol and application standard, and use that going forward to replace e-mail, texting, and the various isolated islands of "secure chat" solutions (WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc). Allow us to retain and control our own data, while also enabling all of the features and functionality we've come to want from modern tools, and be compatible with other solutions.
IRC and e-mail are both old and busted. 99% of the world wants to communicate and share information with more interactive tooling than ASCII text in a console or static HTML in a mail reader. There are alternatives to Slack, but like every networked application created in the last 10 years, none of them define an interoperable standard. They are all their own vendor-lock-in islands.
Even Mattermost, the most polished "open-source" alternative, is not a standard, it's an application. Applications change all the time. Standards don't. Applications lose backwards compatibility, change their licenses, have closed ecosystems of servers. Standards don't. There's a reason that actual standard network protocols continue to work for 40 years, while applications made just a few years ago are dead and buried. Standards last. They enable interoperability in an ecosystem of supported technology. They give us flexibility, choice, competition, portability. The world is better when we have solid standards to build on.
Replace it all with a standard. Let anyone implement the standard, implement a client, a server, etc. And let people choose the tooling they want - but while being interoperable with everyone else's.
(Note that I'm not talking about federated social networks. E-mail and IRC are not social networks, they are communication tools, private by default, and have to be directed at specific individuals or groups)
We should make Slack a new internet protocol and application standard, and use that going forward to replace e-mail, texting, and the various isolated islands of "secure chat" solutions (WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc). Allow us to retain and control our own data, while also enabling all of the features and functionality we've come to want from modern tools, and be compatible with other solutions.
IRC and e-mail are both old and busted. 99% of the world wants to communicate and share information with more interactive tooling than ASCII text in a console or static HTML in a mail reader. There are alternatives to Slack, but like every networked application created in the last 10 years, none of them define an interoperable standard. They are all their own vendor-lock-in islands.
Even Mattermost, the most polished "open-source" alternative, is not a standard, it's an application. Applications change all the time. Standards don't. Applications lose backwards compatibility, change their licenses, have closed ecosystems of servers. Standards don't. There's a reason that actual standard network protocols continue to work for 40 years, while applications made just a few years ago are dead and buried. Standards last. They enable interoperability in an ecosystem of supported technology. They give us flexibility, choice, competition, portability. The world is better when we have solid standards to build on.
Replace it all with a standard. Let anyone implement the standard, implement a client, a server, etc. And let people choose the tooling they want - but while being interoperable with everyone else's.
(Note that I'm not talking about federated social networks. E-mail and IRC are not social networks, they are communication tools, private by default, and have to be directed at specific individuals or groups)