Was E-mail a Mistake?
Sunday, November 17th, 2019Was E-mail a Mistake?
https://NewYorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/was-e-mail-a-mistake… Describes the benefits of synchronous over asynchronous interactions, in both machine & social settings. Meetings & calls can actually be more efficient than endless messaging!
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“We can acknowledge, with the benefit of hindsight, the reasonableness of the hypothesis that asynchrony in the office would increase productivity. We can also admit that this hypothesis has been largely refuted by experience. To use the terminology of computer science, it turned out that the distributed systems that resulted when we shifted toward asynchronous communication were soon overwhelmed by the increasing complexity induced by asynchrony. We must, therefore, develop better systems—ones that will almost certainly involve less ad-hoc messaging and more real-time coördination.
From this perspective, our moment in workplace history looks rather different. The era that will mystify our grandkids is ours—a period when, caught up in the promise of asynchronicity, we frantically checked our in-boxes every few minutes, exhausted by the deluge of complex and ambiguous messages, while applauding ourselves for eliminating the need to speak face to face.”
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Was E-mail a Mistake?
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/was-e-mail-a-mistake