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USPS Should Ditch Mail and Manage Internet

As a follow-up to my earlier post; I’m beginning to think that the government, and specifically the United States Postal Service should take over the management and support of our Internet infrastructure.

kilowatt

Here’s some of the reasons I think this might be a good idea. Let’s look at the functions of the United States Postal Service:

  • delivery of mail (connecting people)
  • delivery of packages
  • official endorsement of dated materials (think tax returns being postmarked)
  • official government documents (issuing of passports, etc.)
  • economic exchange (delivery of paychecks, tax returns, invoices)

These are the basic functions that I believe are provided by the postal service. As I stated in my earlier post, thinking about the Internet being considered more of a utility, what would the impact of the USPS being the entity responsible for the management and protection of that infrastructure.

  • delivery of mail ultimate function is to connect to people. The functionality of the Internet in this capacity is obvious.
  • delivery of packages is more of a challenge. I think this could easily be completely taken over by FedEx, UPS, DHL and other delivery companies
  • official endorsement of documents could be enabled with more development on digital signatures
  • the issuance of official government documents could either be continued to be down by the USPS, or perhaps distributed out to local BMV’s
  • economic exchange could be pushed more to electronic distribution with more development and enforcement of secure transactions

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Internet Access as Government Utility

I think I may have completely changed my mind on something that I completely disagreed with not too long ago. The idea of Internet access being considered in the same lines as a utility like water, electric and perhaps phone service or sewage made absolutely no sense to me.

postal-utility-service

I’ve always considered Internet access more of a luxury item than something like a utility. If you didn’t have Internet access you could still get by with life.

My decision may have changed though as I started to think about another government service that has been visibly getting replaced by the Internet, and specifically e-mail. That’s right, the United States Postal Service.

Similar to my last post about phone books and yellow pages, I begin to question why we still need and keep the post office around all of our towns and communities. Although we don’t always think about the other services and functions that the United States Postal Service provides to us and our communities, they do a lot more than just deliver envelopes and junk mail to our doors.

Stay tuned as I’ll share more of my thoughts on exactly what the USPS does and how I think the standardization and infrastructure responsibility of the Internet could potentially become the postal service’s next life efforts.

Later we’ll talk about how I really think the infrastructure of the Internet could be a good effort for government involvement.

Image: Gregory Jordan on flickr

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Dead Sea Scrolls of Information

I walked out of my house the other day and I saw something that was amazingly similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls sitting on my porch. I vaguely remembered these items from years gone by, but honestly hadn’t looked at them in forever.

yellow-pages-spam

Okay, they were phonebooks. Remember those? You used to have to use them to look up information about businesses in your area. They were loaded with great information like phone numbers, addresses, maps sometimes, pictures of the businesses and even listings of services they provided.

You’d grab this big, heavy book of paper and thumb through it looking for what you needed, then you’d make a phone call.

When was the last time you used a phone book? What do we use these days instead? The computer! Or even phones themselves to get the information we need.

Why are they still printing these beasts? How many trees are cut down for these? Do we just use recycled paper for them? I sure hope we do.

I understand that there are probably a small percentage of people that still want and use phonebooks, but do they have to print millions of them and deliver them unrequested to our doorsteps?

Why can’t I opt out of this analog spam that shows up at my house at least once a year?

Image: kamaru on flickr