A grand challenge: Paris Hilton's Email
Public Key cryptography is powerful because it allows someone to send us an encrypted email without having the ability to read our encrypted email.
We need something similar to solve the Internet messaging problem. According to Google my email address is published in 36,500 documents on the Web. Not surprisingly I get a lot of spam. If my home telephone was published as much it would never stop ringing. The problem is not just spam and other junk, even the legitimate calls can be overwhelming.
So here is the challenge for the next generation of Internet messaging: a system that combines text, voice, video, synchronous (e.g. Instant Messaging) and asynchronous (e.g. email) seamlessly using the same identifier for all modes of communication with built in filtering systems to direct contact requests to the most appropriate mode based on the state of the person being contacted (work, personal, sleeping), the content of the message (urgent alert, chit-chat) and the party making contact (personal friend, colleague, boss, junk marketer, student, fan, etc.).
We can consider the filtering system complete when Paris Hilton is able to post her personal contact identifier on her Web site so that her personal friends can find her without being inundated with calls from fans and paparazzi.
