Emails are free to send, and that is probably the biggest mistake (so far) in the Internet revolution.
The Radicati Group (2015) estimated that by the end of 2019, there would be close to 3 billion email users worldwide and the number of emails sent per day would be about 250 billion. They recently admitted that they had underestimated this growth, as email traffic has now reached over 306 billion per day generated by over 4 billion email users on the planet (Radicati Group 2019). Email traffic continues to grow exponentially at over 4% per year and is forecast to grow to over 361 billion by the end of 2024. Discounting for adult illiteracy and children below reading age, that is an average of 50 emails sent and received each day for every reading human on the planet. It is not unusual for me to receive a hundred emails a day.
Emails are More annoying than paywalls,
More abusive than pop-up ads (and more disgusting than pop-under ads),
More disruptive than Facebook bots, and
More dangerous than Twitter.
Yes, I think emails are more intrinsically dangerous than Twitter, even considering the recent use of Twitter to plot insurrections, promulgate false medical and public health advisories, and recklessly goad nuclear-armed dictators.
Please note that I am not saying that the misuse or abuse of emails is evil. I am saying that emails are themselves evil. This is not to blame Shiva Ayyadurai (or Ray Tomlinson, but see Menon 2016). We don't know how our children are going to turn out. Sometimes we nurture a beautiful idea, but it goes all Linda Blair on us (cf. Oppenheimer <<>>).
And, to be clear, I am not saying email is a necessary evil. On the contrary, the sooner we get rid of emails, the better off we will be. Emails are a despicable evil that degrades our efficiency, scatters our focus, slows our work, and imperils our ambitions. The quicker we can extract ourselves from the thrall that emails have created over us, the more fluid and productive our work streams will be, and the more efficiently our goals will be met.
SHAME
“Emails are supposed to be asynchronous, so don’t let anybody shame you for not getting back to them on their schedule. If they want that, they have to try to use phones.”
11 November 2017
WHAT WORKS IN INDUSTRY
I left a long career at an independent think tank to take an appointment as a university professor. During a committee meeting, the dean of the school asked me if there were any good ideas that I would be bringing to academia "from industry". My immediate response was "wean yourselves off emails". The dean blinked twice and then proceeded with the agenda as if I hadn't said anything at all.
Once at a dinner party I admitted that I routinely screened calls (listened to voice messages from the callers as they were being recorded to decide if I would pick up the call and speak to the caller), and I was chastised by other party attendees for the impropriety and rudeness of this behavior. Such attitude might seem remarkable; how could it be reasonable that random callers' interests supersede anything I might be doing in my own home or office? Yet such attitudes are increasingly the norm. Donald Knuth, computer science god, famously does not have email. He said [paraphrase] "I had an email account for fifteen years, and that is about as long as anybody should have to have one" (Computerphile 2015). <<>>
Knuth himself admits (time=<<>>) the unfairness of his not accepting emails but impatiently demanding the attention of others whom he targets with emails.
A common misconception among computer scientists and other engineers is that the purpose of communication is the transmission of information. Biologists tell us that communication is a behaviour by one organism (the speaker or sender) that seeks to elicit a behaviour on the part of one or more other organisms (the hearer or recipient).
HOW LONG DOES ONE NEED EMAIL
"I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime." (Knuth 1999)
Susceptibility to misuse (spam, asynchrony violation, DoS attacks)
Vulnerability to abuse (snooping by employer, government or commercial interests)
Anti-ergonomic features (poor structure, poor searchability,
Tendency to create attention overload
Unreasonable use to demand attention
Messaging strategies and media vary widely in their characteristics, including the degree of imposition on the recipient they represent.
text < email < phone call < postal mail < in-person appointment < impromptu in-person visit
The degree of imposition depends on how demanding the request is and the expectation of obligation of the recipient to respond and fulfill the request. Demands are multivariate:
Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
DEMAND CULTURE
“Should I be embarrassed that, whenever I type a ‘W’ on my phone, it auto-completes it with ‘Why aren't you returning my texts?’”
Mary sends emails telling us that the Bibby Seminar Room will not be available today. I think she also sends emails telling us the Bibby Seminar Room is available today.
Lucy sends us emails with attached Excel spreadsheets of information that should not be transmitted by email in the first place. That information should be placed on secure web pages accessible by the people who need it. That information should be accompanied by the several rules and updates, which Lucy sent in eight (eight!) previous emails, and which she also sent last semester and the semester before that, and will send again next semester. To understand her email today, you typically have to rifle through related (but not tagged!) emails from her (and sometimes other people!). Instead of the relevant information and rules being together
Instead of quietly updating trivial errors in her spreadsheet in the on-line webpage, she will regularly send another email, or two.
That means that the bad spreadsheet--the one with the errors--is still in your in-box, still searchable when you're hunting for the information, and the fact that there are errors in it is unmarked. You cannot know there are errors unless you find the new email(s) and process the whole email stream. Consequently, you are very likely to work from the erroneous spreadsheet, and perhaps never be the wiser.
The most egregious email abusers send in-progress work products so that you are bothered over and over and over again, and you have to wade through their entire gestation process in order to find what you finally need.
I answer emails in reverse order of the distance the person is from me geographically and socially. People in foreign countries first. Then students, then bosses, then underlings, then colleagues.
§ It is very difficult to reorder emails into the conversation they represent.
§ You cannot retract or unsend an email.
§ You cannot correct a sent email.
§ You cannot search emails efficiently.
§ Emails are difficult to archive, and they are not being archived, which will become a serious problem for future historians who will not have access to written missives in the way that we have had access to important letters, memos and love notes from previous generations.
§ It is often impossible to tell whether an email comes from your boss, someone who acts like your boss, a Nigerian prince, or the actual David Oyelowo. <<>> My colleague Uchenna fell for a phishing scam in which he bought <<>>.
§ You cannot be sure that a recipient received, saw, read or understood your email.
§ Increasingly, emails have an undeserved air of legitimacy that is dangerous. The content of emails is discoverable in legal proceedings and law enforcements, sometimes without warrant, and may be used to prosecute you or hold you liable, whether or not that content is true, complete, or even relevant, and whether you sent or merely received the email, and in some jurisdictions without respect to whether you even saw, read or understood the email.
§ You cannot merge or conjoin emails by actual mutual relevance.
§ Way too much time and too much effort are consumed by emails.
§ Emails should not be used if a situation requires an immediate or time-sensitive response. (That's what phones are for.)
§ Scattershot, repetitive emails are the new refuge of the lazy thinker who cannot be bothered to assemble all the related points into a one email.
§ No way to remunerate or induce recipients to accept or respond to requests.
§ Emails, texts, pings and clicks, represent focus theft
§ Unclassified (just FYI, might want to do, need to do but no timeline, need to do by a time specific,
§ Incomplete (demand to fill out the TAS form, but no URL to link to the TAS form)
§ Unstructured (cannot see the tree/network of related emails and participants)
§ Too little continuity (related emails are scattered, with no convenient way to group and order them.
§ Too much continuity (recent emails are locked into threads making it difficult to find the most recent email)
§ There are too many routes and portals (<<Drew Barrymore's line from that romcom with the short Long Island actor from Entourage>>). Everyone has multiple email accounts. Trying to regulate and bring some order to their lives, people often have separate accounts for business, school, home, and, ahem, pleasure. Most people can receive SMS text messages on their smartphone. They can still get telephone calls and messages, often on multiple numbers. Many people also receive messages on emergent connectivity apps such as Twitter, Instagram, Slack, LinkedIn, Skype message or video call, WhatsApp, Zoom meeting, chat box or shared screen, FaceTime, Google IM, Facebook messages, Tinder, Grindr, Blendr, Badoo, etc., etc. Each new networking application promises something, and it is sometimes hard to leave these accounts. Because I have an aunt, I still have to watch Facebook. Because I have colleagues in Brazil, I have to watch WhatsApp. Because I want to seem hip, I have to always have Slack open clucking at me at all hours of the day and night.
§ Little interoperability among the portals (other than call forwarding and voice-to-email messaging)
§ Variable senders (emails can be sent to FINENG but are returned from an email address of a particular person within the office, which breaks continuity and searchability)
§ Multiple recipients (broadcast/distributed emails mean that it is unclear whose responsibility for fulfilling the demand)
§ The structure of email communications is usually asynchronous but response expectations commonly treat them as time-sensitive are requiring short turnaround, even absent any explicit statement of a response deadline. I myself was once invited by email to travel around the world to Australia to give a lecture, but, because I didn't respond to the email within three days, the invitation was withdrawn. Even in the early 2000s my failure to respond immediately to email correspondents over the course of a week elicited messages concern for my health.
§ Emails constitute an attractive nuisance for abusive government snooping. The FBI unlawfully searched years of personal emails of philanthropist, diplomat and socialite Jill Kelley, herself the victim in a criminal complaint, although the searches were not pertinent or relevant to any legal investigation, and disclosed information and false characterizations public in an extended bout of victim shaming. Kelley has since become an "apostle for privacy" arguing that protections against government snooping are insufficient and antiquated (Steinhauer 2014).
In their opening statements during the confirmation hearings in the US Senate for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who had been accused by Professor Anita Hill of misconduct during their employment together at a federal agency, the IT professionals who supported emails at the agency explained that they "do not need to read your emails to <<>>", but then made it perfectly clear in their subsequent testimony that they had indeed read the emails.
§ Spam. Duh.
Erotetics is the logic of questions and answers; is the logic of demands/requests/emails part of erotetics or something wholly different? Is a question about erotetics self-referential?
Yes, I think 'email' should be a dirty word. But I acknowledge that there are benefits to living in a hyperconnected world. Of course emails represent a lot of good in the world as well, right? Let's try to think of things. I may be able to cut down on face-to-face meeting with my bosses and my underlings. That's doesn't seem true. Instead, they permit bosses and underlings to pester me more efficiency at almost any hour of the day. One might argue that emails foster intimacies that lovers of generations of old with access only to paper and pen could not imagine. Maybe, it hard to imagine that emails outperform the telephone in this regard.
And as General David Patraeas and his biographer and lover Paula Broadwell
Connectivity itself is the problem behind focus theft.
I propose a radical rethink of our collective use and reliance on emails.
I also propose email holidays (cf. mental health days) <<>>. Some progressive institutions have already banned sending or reading business emails during off hours, but the smart institutions continue to exploit their workers shamelessly.
References
Computerphile (2015). Why Don Knuth doesn't use email. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS8qwMna8_o
Knuth, Don (1999). Email (let's drop the hyphen). https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html
Menon, Rashmi (2016). Ray Tomlinson's 'story' about inventing email is the biggest propaganda lie of modern tech history: Shiva Ayyadurai. The Economic Times. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/ray-tomlinsons-story-about-inventing-email-is-the-biggest-propaganda-lie-of-modern-tech-history-shiva-ayyadurai/articleshow/51337493.cms
Radicati Group (2015). Email Statistics Report, 2015-2019 [executive summary]. https://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf
Radicati Group (2019). Email Statistics Report, 2020-2024 [executive summary]. https://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Email-Statistics-Report-2020-2024-Executive-Summary.pdf
Steinhauer, Jennifer (2014). From Petraeus scandal, an apostle for privacy. The New York Times, 5 January 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/us/from-petraeus-scandal-an-apostle-for-privacy.html
Hi Scott,
I hope things are well with you – apologies from me so you do not need to attend the additional meeting.
Best wishes,
Maria
______________________
Maria White
School of Engineering
The University of Liverpool
Harrison Hughes Building
L69 3GH
Phone: 0151 794 4859
Fax: 0151 794 4703
Working hours:
Monday-Thursday – 7.45 a.m.-4.45 p.m.
From: White, Maria
Sent: 08 July 2020 2:32 PM
To: Ferson, Scott <ferson@liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject: Automatic reply: Mentors meeting
Thank you for your email.
In accordance with UK guidelines I am working from home but will respond as soon as possible.
Maria White
From: Ferson, Scott
Sent: 08 July 2020 14:32
To: White, Maria <mariaw@liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Mentors meeting
I was at the first mentors' meeting, so I guess I don't need to do it again when he returns.
Scott
From: White, Maria
Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2020 1:53:58 PM
To: Curran, Jude; Ferson, Scott; Mannis, Adam
Cc: Jones, Andrea
Subject: RE: Mentors meeting
Dear All,
I hope you are all keeping well.
When convenient, could you please let me have your availability for the additional mentors meeting which Eann has requested – see e-mail below.
Thanks,
Maria
______________________
Maria White
School of Engineering
The University of Liverpool
Harrison Hughes Building
L69 3GH
Phone: 0151 794 4859
Fax: 0151 794 4703
Working hours:
Monday-Thursday – 7.45 a.m.-4.45 p.m.
From: White, Maria
Sent: 02 July 2020 13:20
To: Curran, Jude <jmerice@liverpool.ac.uk>; Ferson, Scott <ferson@liverpool.ac.uk>; Mannis, Adam <a8mannis@liverpool.ac.uk>; Paoletti, Paolo <paoletti@liverpool.ac.uk>; Akhtar, Riaz <rakhtar@liverpool.ac.uk>
Cc: Jones, Andrea <amh@liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject: Mentors meeting
Dear All,
Eann has asked for a meeting for School mentors to be arranged for those staff who were unable to attending the meeting earlier this week or who have just become mentors when he returns from annual leave in August. His availability for the proposed meeting is:
12 August 3.00 p.m.
13 August 1.00 p.m.
14 August 12.00 noon
If you could let me have your availabiluty on the above dates/times it would be appreciated.
Thanks a lot,
Maria
______________________
Maria White
School of Engineering
The University of Liverpool
Harrison Hughes Building
L69 3GH
Phone: 0151 794 4859
Fax: 0151 794 4703
Working hours:
Monday-Thursday – 7.45 a.m.-4.45 p.m.