This is part 2 in an arc inspired by Sweetness' sending me "E-Mail Reply to All: 'Leave Me Alone'". The thrust of the post is that people are so overwhelmed with email they're shutting it off. In some cases they're shutting it off for a while (like I do periodically) and in other cases, well, forever.Hear! Hear!
The concept is "email bankruptcy". Part 1 dealt with Fred Wilson, who didn't start the idea but who gave it wings. This entry discusses how email bankruptcy is infecting the work force.
E-mail overload gives many workers the sense that their work is never done, said senior analyst David Ferris, whose firm, Ferris Research, said there were 6 trillion business e-mails sent in 2006. "A lot of people like the feeling that they have everything done at the end of the day," he said. "They can't have it anymore."
So some say they're moving back to the telephone as their preferred means of communication.
"From here on out I am going back to voice communication as my primary mechanism for interacting with people," wrote Jeff Nolan, chief executive of the business software company Teqlo, in his blog announcing his e-mail boycott.
The term "e-mail bankruptcy" may have been coined as early as 1999 by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who studies the relationship between people and technology.
Professor Sherry Turkle said she came up with the concept after researching e-mail and discovering that some people harbor fantasies about escaping their e-mail burden.
Turkle, who estimated that she has 2,500 pieces of unread e-mail in her inbox, is one of those people. A book she has been working on for a decade is coming out soon. Turkle joked that it would have taken her half the time to write it "if I didn't have e-mail."
Again, I'm there. I wrote in part 1 that I tell people I'm easier to reach by phone than by email. My next book, Reading Virtual Minds, might be done by now if it weren't for emails. I'm happy to use that as an excuse.
And I know my Inbox is backed up. I can feel those unanswered emails, just waiting for me to open them and respond...
(more to follow)
I'll be speaking at the Society for New Communications Research Annual Awards Gala Summit on 1-2 Nov 07 in Boston. Come on by and say hello.
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