Oddbean new post about login | logout Consensus & availability are the two reasons. People want a defacto way to verbally connect to someone and write it on their skin or a napkin and they can assume someone will have that and it can be used to contact them using several form factors. There's also the fact that there's infrastructure to communicate without a smartphone our computer available. Institutions require that people have them to be successful. Job interviews, official business, etc. Not everyone has the privilege of interacting in a digital only world. A skilled tradesman would have constant trouble interfacing with their customers. If a decentralized alternative worked through the phone lines, it would be pretty sweet, or there existed a way to take over control of phone numbers from those entities. I wish we could make them "handles" for another system like keys or dids.
There are many bridge services from telco to digital federated voice/messaging. I use diamondcard.us for SIP and jmp.chat for XMPP. jmp.chat also does SIP and Matrix.
Those are great but they further enforce/bow to the dominance of the phone number.
You don't use a phone number with XMPP or SIP. Or Matrix. The bridge services are just for your old tech friends (although they don't use automated switching).
I was referring to the bridge, not xmpp or sip. Because phone numbers are still desired for the reasons I originally posted, a bridge only highlights why most people are still needing to have phone numbers to function in this world. It's about "availability* to more people's situations, aptitudes, services, and locations. And it's about both cultural and institutional *consensus* that the phone numbers are needed to participate with they who run the shit. To be clear, I do not want the status quo, but it's a narrow view for , well yeah there are so many things that could replace phone numbers. I mean if we are talking about this kind of power, I would ask why did people use .mps when .ogg or .flac were superior and didn't cost anything to build for? On a technical merits only level: easy, there is no good reason. But the history, spread, funding, business, power, profit, behind how .mp3 remained relevant so long is what is more discussion worthy. Same thing here. I'm answering assuming he was asking about why people, themselves, in this world, decide to us;l e a phone number (including for a bridge)