I hope this is not too much of a thread hi-jack, but my observation in my job is that sending e-mails is now considered an acceptable substitute for actual, productive action. Our company is now turning into a self-spamming operation, where managers are sending each other and employees so many emails that they have little or no time to actually do their work.

My manager actually is trying to do his job, and told me the other day that he deleted 1000+ unread corporate generated e-mails that had accumulated in less than 2 days.

The drag on corporate productivity and costs must be enormous.

If I recall my history, our British friends managed to build and administer an Empire on which the sun never set without having either e-mail or cell phones.