Comments on: Life without email?

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:40:34 +0000

there's always twitter, my dear!

By: Mike Chen

Mike Chen — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:16:09 +0000

Great food for thought... When thinking about the myriad of ways I use Email 2.0 (I'm a gmail user), I don't think I could go more than a day or two without it. Here's a quick list of all the things I use my gmail account for today:

1) Regular Email Correspondence
2) Important File/Account/Information Archival (think frequent flyer numbers, lists of people, account logins, official documents)
3) On the fly addressbook/maps management (I send short emails with an address or flight number to my email, rather than printing something out or knowing where the original information is stored)
4) On the fly to do list management
5) IM/Chat on demand in the flow of whatever email I am trying to respond to
6) Essentially my communications hub across my mobile device, my laptop, and any other terminals from which I access my email

By: G

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:13:48 +0000

No, or I'd never be able to “talk” to my husband!

By: Brad Feld

Brad Feld — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:46:27 +0000

While I could “live without email” I have no interest in that particular reality.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:23:01 +0000

I've had an email account continuously since 1988 and even then it became an integral part of how I communicate. My emails have the exact same tone and voice as if I were talking to you. In any case, in all of that time, the longest I've been without email is two weeks while I was in Kenya / Uganda for a little over a month working on an exhibit about Lake Victoria. And, even then I was able to keep it down to two weeks by splicing into my Nairobi hotel's telephone connection and bypassing the operator at the switchboard.

By: MikeK

MikeK — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:20:28 +0000

Mark is just making a choice on a personal preference for communication. In his case: increase phone calls, decrease or even eliminate email. Personally, there is no way I would prefer to increase the amount of calls I'm getting and I'm probably in good company. Mark's experiment is entertaining and provocative as a blog post though. But not much more in the professional world.

By: Cory Levy

Cory Levy — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:24:01 +0000

Interesting experiment. I probably could not live without email because it is something that is integrated into my schedule. Everyday before and after school, I check my email. I have been doing this since the 4th grade! During the summer, I check it periodically throughout the day via iPhone.

When I spoke at my elementary school, I learned that a third grader checks his email periodically throughout the day. Then again, he is different and reminds me of myself when I was a third grader. He is an entrepreneur at heart, without even knowing what that word means . I had no clue what that word meant for a while and still do not have a straight forward definition.

However, I think my friends might be able to live without email. It is something that majority of them do not check periodically everyday. Slowly, email is becoming more and more important to check but I think the more appropriate question to ask is "Could you live without Facebook"? The answer to that question is going to be on my blog later today!