He is talking about a problem which is simply not there. Spam is not a big problem, (keep track of who you're giving your address to), but most importantly spam is not unique to email: give them (spammers) a channel to reach you and they will.

Besides, WHAT IS an email? How exactly is it different from SMS if I trip&forward it to my cell? Email is not even limited to a protocol or any specific software. Any kind of technical definition of "email" that one can come up with will probably evolve around SMTP, i.e. server-side.

The article is unclear on what "trump" is supposed to mean, and in what context.

Does twitter trump E-mail for persistent storage of long messages? Does blogging trump E-mail for personal exchanges among a select group of friends? Does IRC trump E-mail for secure delivery?

You would think a tech investor would realize AOL email is ancient. Gmail trumped Email a while ago.

xobni trumps email :)

You beat me to it!

I feel there are two options: reduce the number of emails you care about, and get through the emails you care about faster. Xobni is working on both.