Returned from holiday in Cyprus today to the usual deluge of emails, I was only away for a week but 256 messages had descended on my inbox.
Its at times like this you take stock of how email is used and I would say that only about 10% of these required action, with the rest mainly for information. The fact that printer 4 will be busy for the next 2o minutes and that it is now not busy anymore is something I don't need to know when I am thousands of miles away. Whilst there is information that I want copied into, the amount of collective brain power used by dealing with general circulation emails is worrying.
You can't help but wonder if the art of conversation is under threat and that a new generation of non vocal Stepford cyberpersons is on the rise.
Of course this is me being hypocritical as my afternoon walks on holiday were really an excuse for me to get away from my partner to catch up with things on my blackberry.