Via datacloud comes the link to this BBC news article, E-mail is the new database.

While users may be using their email as content management systems, I think we are gradually moving toward a new type of application, one that merges the functionality of Google's desktop search and something like Picasa, with a file manager that can manage both local and web-based storage that doesn't separate the web browser from the local file browser (like Konqueror) , our email, RSS subscriptions, etc. In other words, an individual content management system.

I've currently got over 10,000 emails in my email client and thousands of personal files otherwise to organize. Project this over a 20 year period, and I think we can see that even the email client alone as the "new database" isn't going to be sufficient to handle the sort of content management needs for such massive amounts of personal files. We'll also need portability in this structure--the ability to easily make things available to ourselves online and offline (offline for privacy reasons)--and easy web-based publishing and sharing--via blog, p2p and email--all of it in one application to make it manageable.