Well, true, that's what we've grown up with: handles that are clever and reflect something about us (or deflect everything about us). But who wants to use [email protected] as a professional contact address? Unless your full name is John Basketball Expert, which is sort of what I'm getting at. I wouldn't change my kid's middle/surname to Basketball Expert, but I'd consider something like Emily Clementine Raptor Mitchell. Seems silly now, but I like the idea that my child could turn on and off her searchability, or at least tune it up or down.

Two namespace wars in the email address: the part before @, which is where we fight over who gets to be "johnsmith", and the domain, where we fight to get either johnsmith.com, the most neutral, popular name like gmail.com, or a short, memorable, personal, pronounceable, and easy to spell domain.

And then we pitch headfirst into the coming TLD clusterfuck! It all makes for fun times and cash money.