Sometime it is.
E-mail has some well documented issues.
Foremost on my e-mail hates list are spam, cc politics and laziness.
But do we want to go back to the time before E-mail?
Not me. For all it’s problems, and for all the potential of RSS as a publishing medium, E-mail remains an effective tool for what it offers.
Yes it promotes laziness. Yes people surreptitously delegate using e-mail. Yes corporations substitute good communication for e-mail. But does that make it bad? No. IMHO.
E-mail makes it easy to share, store and find information.
News that UK company, Phones 4U has banned all internal e-mail is certainly an interesting departure.
The company’s CEO commented that:
“It’s a very effective tool if used properly…. While I do believe that e-mail in general is the absolute cancer of British business, I only believe that because of the misuse of it.”
I think he has a point, and he believes his staff will save three hours a day. But banning all internal e-mail?
When I think back to the days before e-mail I remember a lot of time being wasted in unnecessary meetings and on unneccessary phone calls. Certainly in my case, I estimate I am doing at least fifty percent more per day than in the days before e-mail – even with spam and lazy e-mail.
There is of course a case for balance.
Phone, face-to-face contact, meetings, bulletin boards and Intranets are all essential, but e-mail does help information move around an organization and reduces the time that it takes to achieve many tasks.
I certainly wouldn’t like to live in an organization where everything had to be conducted through the phone or face-to-face.
Murphy's Law 