Government & industry use technology to slow progress

One of the more reviled aspects of the most recent wave of technological innovation is email. What would the Romans have done.

Hating email works to the advantage of corporations and government officials who want to keep their jobs and perks.
Anyone who has tried to reply to an email and been told they could not, that they must go somewhere else, knows how this works. Usually the consumer/citizen is told to go to a site where if there is anyway to comment it is in a controlled manner that Stalin or Hitler would have admired.

This method lets marketers, or governments, tell you that they want to tell you something but do not want you to be able to reply without going to a great deal of effort. Perhaps even go to the U.S. Post Office, and then keep receipts. Even USPS has caught on to this creepy marketing trick, though only barely, by allowing its customers to get receipt for the delivery of certified mail by email. Of course it requires going line and using a system whose effectiveness was demonstrated by Obamacare.

One of the arenas where the most damage is done is with medicine. Why shouldn’t patients get notices of appointments and results of tests by email?

It would cut the cost of medical. One excuse is the need for privacy. But the same who make that argument use fax machines that often sit in offices where anyone can see them.

The media should know better than anyone how effective email is. But they not only do not understand it, they report on it as if they had never read one.

Coverage of Hillary Clinton is a prime example, whether you like her or not. Media coverage consistently ignores the fact that whatever email account she used there were recipients of any that were sent.

It is becoming widely known that destroying emails is often futile. They can be reconstructed, and if even one person got it then there is a trace. If it went out on the Web, you will never be able to forget it.

European governments are even dumber than America. They think data that has gone out on the Internet can somehow be pulled back and removed from history, sort of like a Stalin-era photo of party leaders. In one apocryphal story, too good to check, the feet of a person meant for the dustbin of history are visible. Sort of like the USS Pueblo crew flipping off North Korea.

Americans should demand the right to communicate by email. U.S. courts have already ruled that emails are legal documents.

Courts are the second area where emails could dramatically reduce costs, and make the system fairer for all concerned, except the lawyers, judges, cops, bail bondsmen, and prison guards who benefit from it as it now operates.