I just don't get this constant fascination of being the one who changes email. This constant race to invent a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Email is not the problem here. Its a textual piece which is parsed by email servers and your email client to deliver 'stuff' to you. That stuff can be anything in the world. This is what makes email such a success that not PG nor an entire pantheon of gods will manage to 'change' or 'reinvent'. Its the simple technologies that end up being the most genius ones. And every two days someone wants to come in and make simple into complicated because they have this idea that the world will actually prefer complicated. Its not a 'todo list' Mr. Graham. Its a generic piece of message or content I'm being sent or sending. Some of it are tasks to perform. Some of it is my nan asking how her grandchildren are, and some of it is Mr mamboto of Nigeria who wants to give me 35 million dollars - Win!
There is no problem with email. You don't want to change email. This is not the problem you're looking for. What you should be looking, perhaps, is a smarter email client which can represent the contents of various email's differently based on the context of the message. Some messages are todo lists, some are letters from nan, some are offers of a better life from Mr. Mamboto.
Hahaha. I love it. I think it was Joel Spolsky who said that you shouldn't worry too much about discussing your ideas because if they're actually novel the risk that people will steal them is low since in reality you'd have to shove them down most people's throats to try to get them to understand.
Reading these comments has only reinforced that notion. It seems silly to me that anyone could look at the way email works and say "yup, this is perfect, it's not possible to do better, let alone much better". And yet everyone who uses emails runs into the same frustrations with it many times a day. You go on telling people that email is fine, that just winnows out the future competitors, and I'm fine with that.
While I would tend agree with you that we don't need to change email, your examples actually do fit quite nicely into the "email as to-do list" idea:
An email from Nan would be a "read and reply" task. The email from Mr. Mamboto, assuming it's not caught by my spam filter, also requires me to take action.
I disagree with this quite strongly. If you think that 'an email from Nan' is a 'read and reply' task, then you can turn everything you ever do into a to-do list. Buying a steak is a to-do item because you have to cook it. Discussing what someone's reading at the moment is a to-do item because you have to decide whether to buy the book they suggested. Etc, etc. Almost everything we do either completes a task or creates a new one, if you want to see it that way.
For extremely busy people, everything becomes a to-do list. And this is why I'm somewhat unconvinced by PG's notions of email as to-do list. It probably is if you're a busy and successful person who gets a lot of business information and requests via email.
To my mind, the reason email seems that way more than other communications is largely because email clients give you pretty good ways of turning those communications directly into to-do items (unlike, say, the telephone, where you have to explicitly consider and organise the tasks that come from those communications).
Mamboto's email requires you to take no action what so ever. Its not for you. Its for the gullible 0.001%. You are clever.
To me, a to do list is a to do list. That's it. Everything else from breathing to going to the loo can be seen as to do if you squint hard enough but its not. Its just part of life's action and reaction.
Like I said, its not email that's broken. If anything its (arguably) the email clients.
There is no problem with email. You don't want to change email. This is not the problem you're looking for. What you should be looking, perhaps, is a smarter email client which can represent the contents of various email's differently based on the context of the message. Some messages are todo lists, some are letters from nan, some are offers of a better life from Mr. Mamboto.