Email is a Legacy Protocol | Peter Hughes
I still use email. But I rarely use it to talk to people. Most human conversation has moved to messaging, calls, and collaboration tools. Email has quietly become something else: an identity layer, a receipt archive, and a password reset mechanism. Why developers keep asking for it Email is convenient. It is universal. It works as a unique identifier. It provides a recovery channel. For a long time it was the simplest way to bootstrap trust on the internet. But convenience has a cost. Phishing, spoofing, spam, breaches. We have layered security on top of a protocol that was never designed for hostile environments at modern scale. What is replacing it - Single sign on with a trusted identity provider - Passkeys that remove passwords from the equation - Device based authentication - Biometrics as a verification factor The common theme is this: identity becomes stronger, and recovery becomes safer, without requiring a constantly monitored inbox. An AI native angle As AI agents begin acting on our behalf, email becomes even less natural. Agents do not check inboxes. They call APIs. They use tokens. They negotiate permissions in a structured way. Email is a human era workaround. Useful, familiar, but increasingly legacy. Does it disappear Probably not. It will remain for formal messages, receipts, and archival use. But it does not need to be the centre of the digital universe. The interesting work is not saving email. The interesting work is designing what replaces its identity role cleanly, securely, and with less friction.
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