The answer, of course, is that email is as tempting as it is inescapable, for Mrs. Clinton as well as for the rest of us. More than 50 years after its birth, email exerts an uncanny hold on all of our internal affairs.

But everything must meet its maker, and for email, that time is nigh.

The sudden exposure of the Clinton campaign email cache is perhaps the ultimate evidence that we’ve all overcommitted to email — we’ve put too much in it, expected too much from it, and now, finally, we’re seeing the spectacular signs of its impending destruction.

Email is simply not up to the rigors of modern political and business life. It lulls us into a sense of unguarded security that it never delivers. It entices us to spill our darkest secrets, and then makes those secrets available to any halfway decent hacker. There are several alternatives that could take its place, without the same pitfalls, and the Clinton cache shows why we would be wise to adopt one of them.

Let’s pour one out for email, which has had quite a run. Then let’s move on to something else, and dance on email’s grave.

The latest Clinton emails come from the hacked Gmail account of John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman. I emailed the campaign to ask about the breach and email security practices, but I got no response. (Maybe they’ve shied away from email?) The campaign has refused to confirm the authenticity of the messages, which speaks to one of the shortcomings of email: It can easily be forged, so there’s no good way for anyone reading those messages to confirm that they really are the Clinton campaign’s.