Email’s freedom trap

They were right, though they were a bit off on the direction of change they predicted. Before email, operations were slowed down to the speed of information flows. After email, there was simply too much information around, and much of it was confusing or irrelevant.

But for the electronic worker, it’s a freedom trap. Since last year, the Electronic Messaging Association (ema.org), which promotes better online communications, has been collecting data on email usage, and the future it points to looks grim. In its recent survey on electronic forms usage, it found that only 4 per cent of 2,000 respondents could confidently assert that they would never, ever need the technology. On the other hand, firms which already used forms found their workflow cycles tighter by 47 per cent and their paper bills slashed by 37 per cent. Ninety per cent of respondents were sure that forms had helped their business. No exit.

It’s the same story with email which, like forms, became popular in the early nineties thanks to the perception that cutting overheads was the real end of business, and that the best way to do that was to slash jobs and hand over their functions to automated processes. Email, which had started out as asynchronous communication, started being used as archive, database, task tracker, address book, networker in job groups, corporate harassment tool and, finally, an end in itself. Big trouble loomed, because email was never intended to perform these functions. Recently, Steve Whittaker and Candace Sidner of Lotus Corp conducted a detailed survey of usage problems with their company’s own product, LotusNotes. One of the commonest: lost material that takes more time and trouble to retrieve from gigabyte hard disks than if it had been written down on a bit of paper and shoved in a drawer. Another common problem: outrage at mail that is not responded to. Unlike Bill Gates (billg@microsoft.com), who gets a kick out of keeping in touch, most executives find it impossible to answer all their mail and hold down their real jobs at the same time. Conversely, it is not unknown for remorse ridden executives to get into marathon mailing sessions. Worst-hit are the corporates who have gone in for Intranets. Instead of walking down the corridor and exchanging a few words, their executives compulsively hit the Send button. Some extremely hitech corporations have actually had to ban in-house emailing for certain hours of the day. And finally, email has created a monster called the Lurker Boss. He hates confronting his people and when things go wrong, he zips them a mail. The trouble is that in a face-to-face communication, his tone of voice, inflection and body language would have tempered the reprimand. In an email, the bare words leap angrily out at the erring minion, who then gets into a very counterproductive mood. If the Lurker sends copies to his peers and his boss, things can get very nasty indeed. Until better tools are developed, that can scan, preview and filter mail reliably, it seems unlikely that email will be of much use in local office situations. It will remain what it was always intended to be: the cheapest, fastest, most informal form of communication known to man.