Pamela writes: “Turkle suggests all kinds of times out from technology—dinner time, before bed, that sort of thing.”
There’s conflict that is created between those people that use electronic communication non-stop for their work vs. those that don’t want to. The former are essentially working more hours of the day. All other things being equal, they have productivity advantage, especially for project management type tasks. This is different than people who are glued to social media. That’s just an addiction. I don’t really see what the big deal is about high-volume e-mail. For me, it is far better than the telephone. Telephone calls often seem to represent an expectation from the caller that their disorganized wants are more important than my concentration. E-mails can be tracked much easier than voice-mails. They can be composed over many hours if needed as a low-priority part of multitasking. The main problem I have with e-mail is not that correspondents don’t respond with low latency, it is that they forget to or don’t treat it as a serious type of communication. I usually give up on working closely with such people unless they have some exceptional ability or knowledge that I need. Whether people use e-mail concisely, and to a lesser extent, quickly, is a pretty good predictor of how good of a coworker they will be. Marcus
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