the corner office

Andrew Pollack has an interesting and spot-on analysis of what email has come to mean in the average knowledge worker's life - The end of the e-mail centered workday:

The speed and ease with which we dash off quick comments to one another in the workplace; quote text from previous parts of the conversation as if it were courtroom evidence to make our points; copy other coworkers to strengthen our case; or use the implied threat made by copying someone’s boss to gain leverage or faster service has turned e-mail into a hostile, negative, pressure filled environment that cannot be ignored for a moment lest our fortunes be decided without our presence. E-mail has become the meeting we cannot miss and the threat we cannot ignore. Worse -- our misstatements, heated responses, and half considered ideas become permanent parts of our workplace selves and are passed around and brought back to us both in and out of context like unresolved barbs from an old lover’s quarrel. A friend of mine back in the 1980’s –perhaps one of the first friends I’d met on-line – once said prophetically “Ours is a medium in which our thoughts are shared in an instant and live on for an eternity.”

So true. Well worth reading his entire post. Check it out.