The Evils of E-Mail
Stumble It!Count to three before you hit that send button
Alec Appelbaum, in The Evils of E-Mail, for CIO Magazine, discusses some of the silly things we do in email, the impact they have on the unfortunate recipients and what we can do about it.
Sometimes we just don't think...
Impetuous emails, smart 1-liners which cause offence, forgetting there is a real person at the other end and just getting carried away by the flow of our own language can all cause huge waste.
It is particularly important in virtually networked teams and the minefields of multiple locations, timezones, languages and business cultures.
So before you fire your next email out, just pause, count to three and check:
- How well do I know the recipient and the way they write and read email?
- Keep it short – the risk of misinterpretation is proportional to the size of the email - 2-3 lines is usually about right
- Am I using clichés or local expressions which will not travel well - any doubt take them out
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Bioteams Books Reviews
Mobile phone users: are we now cyborgs
The term cyborg is used to designate an organism which is a mixture of organic and synthetic parts so designed to enhance its abilities via technology. William Mitchell a professor at MIT Media Lab believes that through our mobile devices we are all becoming mobile cyborgs and its for the better. In his book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City which he discusses in an interview with James Harkin Mitchell describes how the new communications technologies have overlaid our city spaces with central nervous systems connecting us into the wireless ether via our mobile devices which act as umbilical cords to anchor us into the information society's digital infrastructure.
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