It is essential to maintain the universal post office model which the
founding fathers found so important, as well as their subsidy of the free
movement of ideas (bulk rates for newspapers and magazines in the hard print
paradigm).
As to the issue of universal permanent e-mail addresses - I think the postal
address model works perfectly well in the e-mail realm. Perhaps the missing
link is merely the mail forwarding mechanism that would allow one to change
addresses. One of the correspondents previously mentioned the similarlity to
the way our ancestors took names, eg: Bice of White Plains. Now I'm
Bicew@aol.com. If I decide to shift my base - to my public library or other
equivalent of a local e-mail post office box, given the presence of such a
forwarding link, it would be my responsibility to administer my address
change.
I would have a real hard time with a e-mail address tied to some form of
universal id code.
Perhaps another idea would be temporary e-mail addresses at a local library,
so that if a person were researching a term paper, one could send out queries
and recieve feedback for a limited time.
WATPA should stand for the development of pilot projects in our public
institutions along these lines. A press release seems like a good idea.
Enjoy -
Bice Wilson