Can we live without email?
In 2004, Lawrence Lessig declared “email bankruptcy”, sent out a single mass apology, and presumably started again with a blank sheet. By now, he might well be deeply in “email debt” again.
Today, life without email is becoming a more realistic prospect. The combination of various social networking and collaboration solutions is leading some commentators to seriously contemplate “life without email”. IBMer Luis Suarez has been living (and working) for over a year without email.
I also heard, I think from Paul Thomas, of a company that only allows employees to send emails while pedaling on an exercise bike! I bet that rescued a few who were on the way towards bankruptcy.
Emails encourage secrecy and stifle innovation. I’m not keen on replacing email with the even more annoying Twitter (that’s one for the exercise bike too!), but we have fallen into using email as a very bad knowledge management tool. With open collaboration tools improving at the current rate, it is time to reconsider the role of email and closed documents in the workplace.
If you can’t conceive life without email, then please take the time to watch the video introducing Google Wave. I have been a bit worried recently that Google is turning itself into the next Microsoft, but there seems to be a real commitment to opening Google Wave, and it looks like a real winner. I really can see it replacing email, and wikis, and instant messaging, and document collaboration, and … It is what Notes has always striven to be. Goodbye email bankruptcy, hello drowning in Waves.
If you don’t have time to watch the video (it is 90 minutes), read this review.
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