A replacement for email

What a dreadful idea.

How could I prove that you wrote me what you wrote me in the first place if you could edit your email after I received it?

Email is not facebook, people.

This is brilliant in its simplicity. It would be very feasible to implement on a single web server, but what are some ways to extend it into a protocol?

If multiple servers mirror an email thread, how does one edit what he has already sent/posted? I think this can be done by using a public key encryption scheme, so that only the person who published it with their key can edit it on the multitude of servers that share this new email protocol.

We are developing external and internal communication tool that has all the features that you have described. It called Discourse - http://www.discoursehq.com We are releasing new version on 3rd of October that is more flexible and generic then current one - if anyone would like a beta invite please let me know!

If you're using this just for inside your company, it's already been invented. It's called a forum.

As far as outside the corporate environment, the reason email persists is:

1) Email is robust

2) Email is distributed, and not controlled by any one entity

Email is almost like the bittorrent of communication, at least in my mind.

IM2000 has some interesting ideas applicable to some of the issues raised here.

Isn't the 'unsend' feature one of the things Microsoft was trying to achieve with the Trusted Computing malarkey?

Novell Groupwise does the message recall thing. Not that I am suggesting you use that, but it has that feature.

google docs?