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Maybe Email Isn't Such a Great Idea, After All

Anyone even remotely using a computer will, at the very least, access the email facility. Many people would ask how we can do without email. The number of emails spinning around the globe, daily, goes into the millions.

But, is email so a great thing? Writing in the Christian Science Monitor [reproduced in AlterNet] "Maybe Email Isn't Such a Great Idea, After All" Tom Regan answers the question:

"Ken Siegel doesn't beat around the bush. He doesn't like e-mail.

"I don't even have an e-mail account," he says. "When I tell that to the executives I work with, first they look at me with surprise, and then they look at me with envy."

Dr. Siegel, a psychologist and president of Impact Group, management consultants in Los Angeles, is on a bit of a crusade. He wants there to be less e-mail in the world. So he's helping his business clients organize activities such as a "no e-mail Friday" in order to increase productivity.

That's right: increase productivity.

"E-mail is not a communication device, it's a broadcasting device," says Siegel. "It will actually truncate communication. And in the truest sense of the word, it has become a psychological dependency. We have convinced ourselves that we can't live without it."

E-mail takes up more and more of our time at work, according to Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, Calif., research and consulting firm. E-mails sent by a company's workers are projected to increase 27 percent this year, to an average of 47 a day -- up from 37 a day in 2006. And that's not the upper ranks of a company, where even more e-mails can accumulate.

The question then becomes "Do we really want our company to be spending so much of its time doing something that ultimately isn't productive?"

But how can we live without it?"

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