OPEN

Image: Dreaming of worlds before and beyond email…

Hands up who likes email?

No one? Oh. One at the back.

Listen to me: You’re an idiot.

Take that opening salvo by way of short-hand about the inefficiencies and multiple friendly-spam abuses of email.

It wasn’t built as a file-transfer system, a conversation-space or anything like that and there are plenty of tools now that let us do things with email better. So I’m not doing it anymore.

It’s good for short messages and memos. Thassit. Enough.

I am not even going to mention the word anymore. Nor am I going to twitch and fuss and watch my browser, my phone or my Outlook for new messages. I shall go to my inbox a couple of times a day and “deal with my correspondence”.

That’s right, my correspondence. I’ll imagine myself a Victorian gentleman in my library in a comfortable chair next to a bureau with a silver coffee service on it, primed and ready to go, wearing a smoking jacket and opening mail with an ornate letter opener.

That should put me in the right frame of mind.

I’ve no problem with being always on. Just not always on for any distraction that happens to know my email address.