Great article. This is so true:

> Like Internet itself, a defining feature of email is its interoperability: two persons can use different systems and still exchange emails. If you send an email from Hotmail, someone using Gmail will be able to open it, read it, and reply to it.

Unfortunately, modern communication services have not embraced this open attitude. What we have now is a multitude of communication silos that don’t want to talk to each other.

We at https://matrix.org are trying to fix that. We have defined an open and free protocol that anyone can use in their app (or connect to via a bridge) — and the aim here is to create an open ecosystem where it doesn’t matter which app you are using, as you can talk to anyone else in this ecosystem (regardless of which app they are using!).

Just like email, you could then send me a message (or request a VoIP call) — you don’t need to worry about which app I’m using — any Matrix-enabled app can receive and handle the message or VoIP call!