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Disconnect – the Generation Gap

This cartoon by Agent X feels appropriate before the next post by Chirag

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

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Texting Driver Causes Trolley Accident

When California banned holding a cell-phone while driving, it  unintentionally left a loophole: texting was not specifically banned.  You’d think it’s common sense, but apparently it’s not, and it took another heated debate and another law to ban texting while driving. 

Today we’re seeing proof from Boston while it’s really bad: a 24-year old trolley driver was texting his girlfriend when he rear-ended another trolley in front of him, that got stopped by a red light in a tunnel. He may have looked down for just a few seconds it takes to type a word, but by the time he looked up he could not slam the brakes hard enough.

The speed of the incoming trolley is not known, but it sent the other trolley 100 feet forward in the tunnel.  49 passengers were injured, none in a life-threatening condition.

Full story at the Boston Globe.

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Email is Still Not Dead, and Won’t Be For a While

I can’t believe the email is dead theme, popped up again, this time on SocialMediaToday, originally on OnlineMarketerBlog.   I responded in detail on CloudAve.

Image credit: CrunchGear.

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Email is Not in Danger, Thank You

Yet-another-email-is-dead (OK, just in danger) article, this time by Alex Iskold @ ReadWriteWeb.  Alex adds Twitter‘s increasing popularity to the standard “reusable” arguments: teenagers using IM, or increasingly SMS, and most recently Facebook instead of email which they find cumbersome, slow and unreliable – hence email usage will decline.

I beg to disagree as I did before, and before.  Sure, I also get frustrated by the occasional rapid-fire exchange of one-line emails when by the 15th round we both realize the conversation should have started on IM. Most of teenagers’ interaction is social, immediate, and SMS works perfectly well in those situations. However, we all enter business, get a job..etc sooner or later, like it or not…smile_wink Our communication style changes along with that – often requiring a build-up of logical structure, sequence, or simply a written record of facts, and email is vital for this type of communication.  As much fun Twitter may be, I rarely have (or see) serious ongoing discussions there  – in other words Tweets are in addition, instead of email.

Email in business is being “attacked” from another direction though: for project teams, planning activity, collaboratively designing a document, staging an event… etc email is a real wasteful medium. Or should I say, it’s the perfect place for information to get buried. This type of communication is most effective using a wiki, or an increasing number of online tools supporting native collaboration.  Yesterday I reviewed a startup CEO’s ppt deck, and it took us 4 rounds of emailed versions of the same presentation – it would have been a lot easier to collaborate on just one “master” presentation in Zoho Show.

So yes, I agree with Alex, even in business we’re offloading stuff off email.  But email is far from dead, or even in danger, and it won’t be any time soon. We just have to learn to use the right tool in the right situation. As usual, Rod Boothby says it better in a single chart:

Rod’s chart is almost two years old, but still valid – perhaps I would update it to say “Wiki and collaborative documents”.  My own post here is a slightly updated version of an older one from last year, which in turn was an almost verbatim reprint of another one from July 2006. I rarely re-post old stuff, but in this case I felt it still made a valid point.  Next year, when someone brings up the “is email dead?” question, I’ll dust it off again. smile_tongue

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Email is Still Not Dead

Yet-another-email-is-dead-article, this time on Slate. It’s the same old argument: teenagers using IM, or increasingly SMS, and most recently Facebook instead of email which they find cumbersome, slow and unreliable – hence email usage will decline.

I beg to disagree. Sure, I also get frustrated by the occasional rapid-fire exchange of one-line emails when by the 15th round we both realize the conversation should have started on IM. Most of teenagers’ interaction is social, immediate, and SMS works perfectly well in those situations. However, we all enter business, get a job..etc sooner or later, like it or not…smile_wink Our communication style changes along with that – often requiring a build-up of logical structure, sequence, or simply a written record of facts, and email is vital for this type of communication.

Email in business is being “attacked” from another direction though: for project teams, planning activity, collaboratively designing a document, staging an event… etc email is a real wasteful medium. Or should I say, it’s the perfect place for information to get buried. This type of communication is most effective using a wiki. No, email is not dead, and it won’t be any time soon. But we all have to learn to use the right tool in the right situation. As usual, Rod Boothby says it better in a single chart:

(The above post is an almost verbatim reprint of an older one from July 2006. I rarely re-post old stuff, but in this case I felt it was still a valid point. And it still will be, next year when someone declares email dead again. smile_tongue)

Related posts: mathewingram.com/work, Techdirt, Fractals of Change, Don Dodge, WebProNews, Thomas Hawk’s Digital …, Andrew Hyde and This is going to be BIG., Rev2.org, CrunchGear, A VC , Good Morning Silicon Valley, Socialtext Enterprise … , Between the Lines, Publishing 2.0, Jonathan Nolen

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