> What is needed to fix email is to have structured messages [...] something that won't happen You're right in a way that this "won't happen", because Google W

> What is needed to fix email is to have structured messages [...] something that won't happen You're right in a way that this "won't happen", because Google Wave already tried it, but I think what's really needed is a killer client that supports unstructured email and gets into a position whereby they can add structure (and get adoption thereof). Take for example Fastmail's JMAP. They started by supporting IMAP, and they'll continue to support it for a long time. But, despite Fastmail not being the biggest provider in the world, we're still seeing adoption of JMAP by others. I could see the same happening with a really well-made open client. It would have to be "modern" (a GUI that handles & sends HTML mail well), and it would have to have good UX to deal with the awful idiosyncrasies of closed providers (e.g. Gmail's broken IMAP, Google Accounts' non-standard auth measures, etc.). Once those work well, one could create a new Content-Type for structured metadata and start sending it as part of multipart mails: most clients would ignore it at first and render plaintext. This might be less efficient (bandwidth-wise) than traditional email at first, but could improve on that with adoption.