There was a time when people dressed in their best suits to travel by train, later by plane. Traveling ragged was considered offensive to fellow travelers. Today, it is perfectly acceptable to board the plane in tracksuits and flip flops, the suit is worn only on short flights, when the plane serves you practically as a taxi.
Well, the same thing happened with e-mail. At the beginning of its existence, it replaced the physical letter, inheriting all its attributes, from address to signature. Then it slowly changed and started to look more and more like instant messages. Think about how often you send emails that are the length and nature of an SMS?
Email could die out, claims the New York Times, and they have suspects. Hillary Clinton's campaign. Secrets from the campaign have been leaking out for a simple reason in recent weeks: someone hacked their email account. And not all the accounts, it was enough to break into the one used by campaign chief John Podesta and – bam! Everything is at your disposal! And you broke only one code, probably not very complicated, and that was on gmail.
Email has some attractive features. Multiple people can join the conversation without it interfering with their regular duties, which is where it differs from other messaging services where everyone needs to be active at the same time for it to make sense. This means that one issue can be discussed by email throughout the day as someone finds the opportunity to deal with it between other obligations, private and business. Then, you can access it from various devices, mobile and stationary, add huge files to it for viewing. The good thing is that it is possible to follow chronologically when someone said something, and what is even more important, what was said by whom is documented if any responsibility needs to be determined later. Email is also used as a reminder, personal or group.
All these virtues become flaws when an intruder joins the discussion and that imperceptibly. The "New York Times" analyzed Podesta's emails and gained insight into the work of the entire campaign based on them. At the same time, the "Times" are extremely well-intentioned (not to say cheerleaders) towards the Clinton campaign. They are full of understanding for the messages that the pro-Trump media are outraged by. Which means the messages are killer for the campaign.
"The Times" therefore laments that politicians have abandoned the practice of making arrangements over the phone or meeting in person to discuss sensitive issues, and even worse, that even after such discreet meetings, an email about everything is recorded and sent to whoever needs it. The answer is simple, the possibility of constant communication speeds up our activities, if I can agree on something by email I save time for a meeting (where I can be seen), while a phone conversation is just indiscreet. Who knows who hears me or eavesdrops. And it's not always convenient to close the office door or go out into the hallway to mutter into the phone.
Email is easy to hack, and we trust it with the most important information related to our life and work. He has the security of a postcard on which we have written where we keep the house key and when we will be on our way.
A few weeks before the election, the Clinton campaign abandoned email communication and switched to more secure applications (Signal). Too little, too late, would say Americans and Internet experts, who think that this campaign was marked by e-mail, which the smart and cautious will stop using.
