Email is for tomorrow

Came across this article on The Age website the other day - "Ten fascinating facts about email".

Email is something we tend to take for granted these days, it's become fairly ubiquitous, particularly in a business scenario. While Facebook, Twitter and other social media are making their mark on Internet communication, email still holds the reigns as the dominant form.

However, for all its advantages, email does have its flaws. One of my boss's favourite sayings is "Email is for tomorrow". What that means is, not that email is a futuristic form of communication, but that you can ignore or delay responding to an email, as the sender has no idea when you have actually read it. Because of this, email is not ideal for when you need an immediate response from someone.

This can be a particular problem for those of my generation or younger. Because we've grown up with email and text messaging, we tend to favour them as our preferred forms of communication.

This is despite the fact that, sometimes it's far more effective just to pick up the phone and call someone. Even if they don't answer, at least you know they definitely haven't received your message. With email or text, there's still some doubt as to whether they haven't received or read it yet, or if they're just ignoring you.