>From radev Sat May 26 18:47:29 2007
Return-Path: <listbox+trampoline+247+126316+898f3c1b@v2.listbox.com>
Received: from mail.umich.edu [141.211.14.46]
by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-6.2.5)
for radev@localhost (single-drop); Sat, 26 May 2007 18:47:29 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from murder (mail.umich.edu [141.211.14.36])
by midnightrun.mail.umich.edu (Cyrus v2.3.8) with LMTPA;
Sat, 26 May 2007 18:47:20 -0400
X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.3
Received: from murder ([unix socket])
by mail.umich.edu (Cyrus v2.2.12) with LMTPA;
Sat, 26 May 2007 18:47:20 -0400
Received: from holes.mr.itd.umich.edu (holes.mr.itd.umich.edu [141.211.14.79])
by godsend.mail.umich.edu () with ESMTP id l4QMlKOU027187
for <radev@mail.umich.edu>; Sat, 26 May 2007 18:47:20 -0400
Received: FROM chiclet.listbox.com (chiclet.pobox.com [208.210.124.77])
BY holes.mr.itd.umich.edu ID 4658B8F7.2B079.23914 ;
26 May 2007 18:47:19 -0400
Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 66FD3189FD4
for <radev@umich.edu>; Sat, 26 May 2007 18:47:40 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by
thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7EA72BEA for
<ip@v2.listbox.com.email.yay>; Sat, 26 May 2007 18:46:23 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from sceptre.pobox.com (sceptre.pobox.com [207.106.133.20]) by
thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8956070E for <ip@v2.listbox.com>;
Sat, 26 May 2007 18:46:22 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from sceptre (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by
sceptre.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 51E802EF for <ip@v2.listbox.com>;
Sat, 26 May 2007 18:46:22 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from localhost (c-71-206-231-16.hsd1.pa.comcast.net
[71.206.231.16]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No
client certificate requested) by sceptre.sasl.smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with
ESMTP id 234CB52848 for <ip@v2.listbox.com>; Sat, 26 May 2007 18:46:21 -0400
(EDT)
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2)
References: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0705251335490.23378@whirlwind.he.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
Message-Id: <973E4FC7-6B38-4B7D-8B28-A3038AAAFCDC@farber.net>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: [IP] E-Mail Reply to All: 'Leave Me Alone'
Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 18:46:00 -0400
To: ip@v2.listbox.com
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2)
X-Listbox-UUID: EDBF52DC-0BDA-11DC-89B9-D84666D9244B
Reply-To: dave@farber.net
List-ID: <ip@v2.listbox.com>
X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 <ip@v2.listbox.com>
List-Software: listbox.com v2.0
List-Help: <http://v2.listbox.com/doc/help_sub>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:subscribe-ip@v2.listbox.com>,
<http://v2.listbox.com/subscribe/?list_id=247>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:unsubscribe-ip@v2.listbox.com>,
<http://v2.listbox.com/member/unsubscribe/?list_id=247>
Errors-To: listbox+trampoline+247+126316+898f3c1b@v2.listbox.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/
AR2007052402258_pf.html
E-Mail Reply to All: 'Leave Me Alone'
By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 25, 2007; A01
Last month, venture capitalist Fred Wilson drew a lot of attention on
the Internet when he declared a 21st century kind of bankruptcy. In a
posting on his blog about technology, Wilson announced he was giving
up on responding to all the e-mail piled up in his inbox.
"I am so far behind on e-mail that I am declaring bankruptcy," he
wrote. "If you've sent me an e-mail (and you aren't my wife, partner,
or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over."
College professors have done the same thing, and a Silicon Valley
chief executive followed Wilson's example the next day. Last
September, the recording artist Moby sent an e-mail to all the
contacts in his inbox announcing that he was taking a break from e-
mail for the rest of the year.
The supposed convenience of electronic mail, like so many other
innovations of technology, has become too much for some people.
Swamped by an unmanageable number of messages -- the volume of e-mail
traffic has nearly doubled in the past two years, according to
research firm DYS Analytics -- and plagued by annoying spam and
viruses, some users are saying "Enough!"
Those declaring bankruptcy are swearing off e-mail entirely or, more
commonly, deleting all old messages and starting fresh.
E-mail overload gives many workers the sense that their work is never
done, said senior analyst David Ferris, whose firm, Ferris Research,
said there were 6 trillion business e-mails sent in 2006. "A lot of
people like the feeling that they have everything done at the end of
the day," he said. "They can't have it anymore."
So some say they're moving back to the telephone as their preferred
means of communication.
"From here on out I am going back to voice communication as my
primary mechanism for interacting with people," wrote Jeff Nolan,
chief executive of the business software company Teqlo, in his blog
announcing his e-mail boycott.
The term "e-mail bankruptcy" may have been coined as early as 1999 by
a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who studies the
relationship between people and technology.
Professor Sherry Turkle said she came up with the concept after
researching e-mail and discovering that some people harbor fantasies
about escaping their e-mail burden.
Turkle, who estimated that she has 2,500 pieces of unread e-mail in
her inbox, is one of those people. A book she has been working on for
a decade is coming out soon. Turkle joked that it would have taken
her half the time to write it "if I didn't have e-mail."
Some people who don't want to go through the drastic-seeming measure
of declaring total bankruptcy say they are trying to gently
discourage the use of e-mail in their communications in favor of more
personal calls or instant messages.
"I am reachable, just e-mail is not a good way to do it," said Sean
Bonner, chief executive of a news blog network who has automatic
responses set up on his work and personal accounts warning he doesn't
check e-mail as often as he used to.
Even those who've chosen partial e-mail engagement say they continue
to struggle with the question of whether or not to reply.
Stanford University technology professor Lawrence Lessig publicly
declared e-mail bankruptcy a few years ago after being deluged by
thousands of e-mails. "I eventually got to be so far behind that I
was either going to spend all my time answering e-mails or I was
going to do my job," he said.
Thereafter, Lessig's correspondents received e-mail equivalents of
Dear John letters: "Dear person who sent me a yet-unanswered e-mail,
he wrote, "I apologize, but I am declaring e-mail bankruptcy," he
said, adding an apology for his lack of "cyber decency."
He eliminated about 90 percent of his e-mail traffic, but said he
can't quite abandon it entirely. "The easiest strategy is just to
ignore e-mail, but I just can't psychologically do that," Lessig said
in an interview.
If there is a downside to completely turning a back on e-mail, it's
not one many former users notice.
Stanford computer science professor Donald E. Knuth started using e-
mail in 1975 and stopped using it 15 years later. Knuth said he
prefers to concentrate on writing books rather than be distracted by
the steady stream of communication.
"I'd get to work and start answering e-mail -- three hours later, I'd
say, "Oh, what was I supposed to do today?" Knuth said that he has no
regrets. "I have been a happy man since Jan. 1 , 1990."
The critics of e-mail themselves have critics, who say copping out is
a reactionary and isolationist way of dealing with modern
communications.
Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor David J. Farber
receives piles of e-mail as the administrator of the "Interesting
People" technology news mailing list. He has no patience for e-mail
bankruptcy.
"For a venture capitalist to say something like this -- he should get
out of the technology field," Farber said.
Wilson, the venture capitalist, did not respond to a phone call
placed to his firm -- or to an e-mailed request for comment.
Staff writer Sabrina Valle and staff researcher Richard Drezen
contributed to this report.
--
Seth Grimes Alta Plana Corp, analytical computing & data management
Intelligent Enterprise magazine (CMP), Contributing
Editor
grimes@altaplana.com http://altaplana.com 301-270-0795
-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
--
Dragomir R. Radev Associate Professor
SI, CSE, Ling U. Michigan, Ann Arbor
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~radev radev@umich.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jun 09 2009 - 05:00:14 EDT