What We Lose When the World Moves On From Email
But they also suggest what we’ll lose when, inevitably, the world does move on to something better
than email — an unmatched historical record of some of the most important stories in the world.
I said pretty much the same thing last year about the emails of John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign
chairman, whose inbox emptied across the internet after he clicked on a link he shouldn’t have.
Both Mr. Trump and Rob Goldstone, an entertainment publicist who had a relationship
with the Trump Organization, understood the sensitivity of their conversation.
What was most notable about the Podesta stash — not to mention earlier releases from the Democratic National Committee
and Mrs. Clinton’s own server — was the Clinton campaign’s apparent slavishness to email.
Though its political implications are yet unclear, the publication of an email chain in which Donald Trump Jr. arranged a June 2016 meeting with a lawyer peddling
the Russian government’s help for his father’s presidential campaign ought to inspire some pretty obvious tech advice: Step away from the inbox, stupid!
The last two decades, email’s high-water era, have thus been a bounty for anyone wishing to understand exactly what was happening
in the inner circles of powerful organizations — for journalists, historians and prosecutors of white-collar crime, among others.
Mr. Goldstone actually noted the sensitivity a couple of times in the email thread.
One of email’s best tricks is asynchronicity — you can send an email even if your recipient is away, unlike a phone call.
