Happy 25th, Sendmail

Last night I attended the 25th anniversary celebration of Sendmail at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Eric Allman is a surprisingly good speaker. He gave a hilarious "look back at the past 50 years of email from 2030" that included things like "After developing partially biologic avatars to intelligently handle our email for us, in 2025 it was determined that 56% of all email was avatars chatting with each other. Also 33% of all government workers had effectively retired, leaving their avatars to do their jobs." One interesting fact I drew away: when I look back misty-eyed on the days when I got hardly any spam, those were the days before spammers really got started.