"Technology's history offers cautionary tales of what goes wrong when new tools yield superficial convenience, but are poorly matched with fundamental human nature. E-mail is arguably one of the best examples of such unintentional consequences in recent history. It’s useful, of course, that we can communicate instantaneously, with almost no friction or cost. Just because it’s possible for us to send and receive messages incessantly through our waking hours doesn’t mean that it is a sustainable way to exist. Technologies serve us best when we deploy their new efficiencies with intention, with an aim to improve the human condition; we can no longer allow email to guarantee our misery; a universal problem that’s become harder to avoid during the recent shift toward a more frenetic and improvisational approach to work: e-mail is making us miserable."
At www.newyorker.com
